Natural Gardening

            Hi everybody and welcome! If you go to your favorite garden center, you will see a massive variety of mulches and groundcovers. Modern mulch products can come in a variety of colors including red, brown and even black. Many of these mulch products are made from cypress trees and this natural resource is being rapidly depleted. There are, however, other options that you can use for groundcovers that are both attractive and also will maintain a natural look in your landscape environment.

            Mulching is primarily done for two reasons. One is for appearance and the other is to maintain good soil health. The latter is the most important reason to mulch your yard. If you look around your environment, you can find many natural and virtually free resources you can use for mulching around your favorite flowerbed. You can use pine needles, pine bark, peanut shells, straw or hay or even crushed rock. If you live on a wooded lot or have lots of trees on your property, you can purchase a chipper and turn your trimmings into a useful groundcover. Many construction areas use chippers to turn the cleared trees into a mulch piles that you can pick up for free. In short, use your imagination. Any natural organic material can potentially be recycled and used as mulch.

            Many people mulch their yards solely for appearance but the reasons for mulching go much deeper then that. Mulch can dramatically lessen the impact of high soil temperatures on your plants. A two-inch layer of organic mulch can lower the temperature of the soil by 30 degrees or more. It also helps the soil to maintain more even moisture content by preventing water evaporation. Mulch also helps to shade out weeds from your garden. By keeping at least a 2-inch covering of mulch in your garden, weeds cannot receive enough light to grow and the few that do survive can be easily taken out.

            Here is a great tip you can use before laying down your mulch. Prepare the area first by laying down a layer of wet newspapers. This not only gives you a good base for laying your mulch but it will also give you an extra barrier of weed protection. It also helps do the double duty of recycling your old newspapers. Best of all, it costs next to nothing to do! The paper will decompose in the soil and will also allow water to pass through easily.

            Another great way to save money and reuse natural resources is to build a compost pile. You can do this by either using a compost bin or you can build the pile right on the ground. It would be wise to locate your compost pile as far from your home as possible so the bugs that help decompose your organic materials do not get into your structure. Using a compost bin can have the advantage of keeping critters out of your pile and also helps to maintain moisture and keeps the compost from blowing around your yard.

            There are basically two ways you can build your compost pile. If you want the process to be as fast as possible, you will need to follow a few extra steps. You should first wet the area under the compost pile and also put some twigs on the bottom of the pile. You will then want to alternate materials. You need alternating layers of nitrogen, which would be grass clippings, and you also need carbons, which would include leaves, hay and dried straw. As you layer your compost pile always moisten the pile with some water. If you don’t have the patience to do this layering process, you can also just add any organic materials such as leaves, grass or dried hay into your pile at your own convenience and add water to keep the pile moist. Keep in mind that doing it this way will result in a slower decomposing process. When the compost is ready, the end material will look almost like humus or good grade topsoil. The entire process can take anywhere from a few months to over a year depending on which method you choose to use. The finished product can then be used on your plants or lawn in place of chemical based fertilizers.

            That’s all for this weeks Garden Nook and I hope you enjoyed it. Next week we will talk about preparing your yard for hurricane season and also some local information about National Gardening Week which is June 5^th through June 11^th. See you then!