Mulch discourages weeds, protects soil from compacting or eroding, and keeps the roots of plants cool and moist in hot weather and insulated in the winter.

My Favorite Mulches:

1. In the summer I would buy cedar mulch to spread around my shrubs and flowers. A layer of 3 to 4 inches would help keep the soil fairly moist even in hot summer weather; in addition, where I had spread the cedar mulch, very little, if any, weeding needed to be done.

My roses just loved the cedar mulch… and the ants and the cats seemed to  hate it. So that suited me just fine!

2. Another type of mulch I just loved was the cocoa bean shells; how I loved to inhale the beautiful chocolaty aroma which would permeate the air when it rained or when the flowers were being watered.

In addition, because cocoa bean shells decomposed so quickly, the plants could benefit from the composted material after 4 to 8 weeks.

Unfortunately, cocoa bean shells turned out to be more expensive than cedar mulch because the shells would decompose fairly quickly so I had to buy more cocoa bean mulch a few more times during the summer to replenish my beds.

Because this method was fairly expensive and I had a lot of ground to cover, I used this mulch for only one season during the 1980′s. Perhaps it is cheaper now.

3. For winter mulching, I would gather all the fallen leaves not only those in my yard but also in my neighbours’ yard every fall and put them through the leaf mulcher.

(Because I live in Southern Ontario, Canada, where the cold weather usually begins around November/December, I couldn’t add the mulch to the rose beds until the temperature was much closer to zero Celsius because I did not want the shrubs to begin growing new branches which would then be killed by the frost/cold.)

So in late October or early November , I would spread layers of this broken down leaf mulch all over my rose gardens. I made sure each rose bush would be protected from the winter elements with as much of this leaf mulch as possible.

Although piling up the soil around each bush works fine, I found that when I used the leaf mulch (along with the soil for I never had enough mulch), I would have more roses earlier in the spring, and my roses seemed to be more fragrant.

4. A fourth way to mulch is to spread bark mulch or wood mulch around your trees. You can buy this type of mulch or you can make your own if you have a wood chipper and put your scrap branches through it. (Note: For some reason, roses do not like pine tree or pine leaf mulch. So I never used pine mulch around my roses)

When I would trim my fruit trees and my red maple trees, I would then make mulch by putting the cut branches which were less than 2 inches thick through a small wood chipper bought at Canadian Tire. (Obviously I never used diseased branches or twigs.)

I had cedar hedge all around my back yard, so when I would cut and trim those hedges, I would gather the cut material and put that through the chipper and then cover the ground around my hedges with this newly made  cedar mulch.

5. One type of mulch which appeared on the market in the spring of 2009 and  which is fast becoming extremely popular is what is known as Nincompoop (http://www.nincompoop.info/1.html) sold through Home Hardware (at least here in Ontario in 2009).

I  used it last summer (2009) in my balcony containers, and I love how it helps retain moisture and at the same time every time the plants were watered they were being fed by the nutrients in this mulch.  What people like is that although the major component of this   gardening and landscaping mulch is manure,  the finished product  looks like earth.

According to the creators/owners, “this Nincompoop is the world’s first Eco-Friendly, Weed-Resistant Organic Mulch that amends your soil by providing food for your worms while retaining 3-times its weight in moisture!  It is a “Moisture Blanket” for your gardens which provides complete weed resistance (when applied properly).

Nincompoop is the only garden mulch that is Weed-Resistant, made of organic ingredients, retains 3x its weight in moisture, that turns into Black Earth…that is why it is Patent Pending.”

You can read more about it at the nincompoop website.  (No, I am not an affiliate, and I am not getting any advertising compensation.  I just love the stuff. If you can’t get the real manure, or you don’t have enough homemade compost, then this is the next best thing for your garden.) 

If you need a mulch that protects and nourishes, use nincompoop.  It may seem expensive, but it’s well worth every penny.

Mulching tips:

1. ONE NOTE OF CAUTION: In the spring, you have to move this leaf mulch away from the rose stems so that the “little decomposter critters” do not decide to include your rose stems as mulch to be decomposed.

I lost two of my favourite beautiful tea rose bushes before I realized what was eating them. From then on as early in the spring as possible, I would push the leaf mulch away from all rose stems to avoid having them being eaten away.

2. You can break down your leaves by going over them with your mulching lawn mower or by putting the leaves in a large metal garbage can and using your whipper snipper(lawn edger) to somewhat break down the leaves.

As you can see, there are as many different types of mulches as there are gardeners. The idea is to use the cold decomposting method via mulching by breaking down woody material (either with a chipper or with a mulcher)and then  spreading the resulting mulch on top of the garden soil so plants can keep growing undisturbed by the decomposition process going on.

3.  To my chagrin I understand that some people are using rubber mulch in their gardens. Now  this is important! Before you decide to add rubber mulch to your flower beds or to the garden, please oh please find out more about what you are planning to add to your beautiful earth.

Please read my post about the  dangers of rubber mulching  at my organicvegetablegardeningguide.com/blog if you are planning to use rubber mulching. Hopefully you will not make the makers of rubber mulch richer by ruining your soil!

4.  Also, if buying mulch for your garden, please be aware that red dye is toxic for both humans and for our little critters doing the decomposting.  Remain natural.  It’s prettier, safer, and healthier for the environment.

Next post is indoor composting.

Until then . . .

Happy Gardening!

Marcie

– more commonly used with crop rotation

Trench composting is way of composting yardwaste by setting up your garden so that you can do a simple three-year rotation of crop: a row of crops, a composting trench, and a path – all side by side.

Instead of burying compost material in separate holes as done in postholing, trench composting involves digging a long pit (usually between rows in a garden) to do your cold composting via soil incorporation.

In other words, you make compost on a regular basis by putting all kitchen and yard waste into this trench and cover the waste with soil.  Gradually the compost trench will fill up and the ingredients/material will be left to decompose throughout fall and winter readying the soil for spring planting.

Year One:

If you are doing your rotation trenching by using a three-year rotation system, begin by dividing your garden into three areas.

In the first year, dig out the trench along the full length of your garden (on either side), every day add table scraps (no meat or dairy) and/or garden waste, and cover with soil.  Use the row next to it to grow crops, and use a third row on the other side of the planted row as a pathway.

Successive Years

In each successive year, the fertile soil of the previous year’s trench is used to grow the crops, your new pathway is where you had crops, and the previous year’s pathway is used as the composting trench.  Thus the garden’s soil is continuously renewed . . . thanks to rotating the trench for trench composting.

Here’s a drawing to help you get a better idea of how you can set up your rows for rotation trenching in year 1, year 2, and year 3.

Other Options:
Although rotating the position of your trenches when doing the trench composting method demands far less space than a conventional composting system, it does require three rows to grow one row of crops. Each garden will suggest its own variations.

Trenches can be dug under the pathways in use . . . one section at a time . . . as the space is needed. In a garden too small for paths, a two-year rotation of crops and trench is fine.

The trench composting method is an easy way to do cold composting right where you need to enrich your soil to grow healthier crops.

My next post will be about Cold composting via Mulching.

Until then. . .

Happy Gardening!
Marcie

Besides composting by soil incorporation, another easy way to cold compost is by postholing, a most unique, easy-to-do, handy way to especially compost  food waste year round. In order to be able to compost by postholing, you might want to avail yourself of a posthole digger — although a spade will do.

The idea is to dig a series of holes around the drip line of trees and shrubs, or in a fallow area of the garden (to avoid stealing nitrogen from growing plants), and bury organic wastes there. The compost is made right where it is needed. (Note: Mixing the organic waste with soil will help keep the animals away.)

You can use what space you have, then start over where the first load has composted. If the holes are dug before the ground freezes, you can continue to dispose of wastes in this way all through the winter.

To be able to bury your waste in the winter, you might fill up a few bags with soil in the fall before the land freezes, and keep the bags in a shed or other area where the soil in them will not freeze. Then use this soil to mix with and cover your waste. Neat, isn’t it!!

In the next post we will discuss composting by rotation trenching.

Till then, happy composting.

Marcie

Be the first to plant this gorgeous Autumn Blooming Cherry

A second cold composting process often used to make organic compost in your back yard is soil incorporation — that is, burying food scraps and/or yard waste in the ground, often on a daily basis. Perhaps you’ve seen people composting by soil incorporation since it is so simple to do especially if you have lots of free land.
Steps to Soil Incorporation:

1. Shred your yard waste and finely chop your food remnants or waste.

2. Mix your ground/mulched waste/chopped material with soil (animals don’t like eating soil with their food, so they will not bother with this chopped material)

3. Most important: Bury the mixture at least 200 cm (8 inches/12 is better) or deeper in the earth (It doesn’t matter where. I used to bury that stuff between my garden rows or at the end of the garden . Thus it would have a year to decompose.)

Depending on soil temperature, bacterial activity, and the carbon content of the wastes, decomposition will take from one month to a year.

One word of caution! Unless already partly composted, high-carbon materials (like raw autumn leaves) should not be dug into the ground next to growing vegetables or plants because as they decompose, they’ll steal their nitrogen from the surrounding soil.

In addition uncomposted leaves can acidify the soil or inhibit the growth of plants because decomposition requires nitrogen and nitrogen is needed for plant growth as well.

Some people get around this problem of “nitrogen stealing” by adding bloodmeal into the ground before digging  in compostable material.

So whether you’re dealing with leaves or other materials which require much nitrogen to decompose, these high-nitrogen materials should be given ample time to decompose underground before the area is used for planting.  That way the growing plants will  keep the much needed nitrogen.

So to summarize: You simply bury the decomposable material as needed without necessarily breaking it down (although breaking it down accelerates decomposition) and allow the material to decompose this year to create compost for next year’s planting.

Soil incorporation  is only one subsystem  of the cold composting system. Tomorrow’s topic is postholing, another way to make backyard compost.

Meanwhile,

Happy Gardening!

Marcie

Imagine a beautiful yellow Spring-blooming Lily- The Boogie Woogie blooming in your yard next June & July. Get your Fall Bulbs today.

There are many variations to home composting, and you can create compost just as easily by using the cold composting systems as you can  via the hot composting method.  Cold composting does work!

If you are not interested in the physical task of turning a hot compost, or if you have plenty of space and don’t need the compost in a hurry, then using one of the cold composting methods might be what you’re looking for.

Even though you have a small household and  accumulate organic waste too slowly to build a hot compost pile all at once, you can still use the cold composting system to create compost, for under the cold composting umbrella there are many ways to create compost.  You don’t need much to start composting.

You can simply build a compost heap by throwing compostable material in a corner (make sure you add browns and greens), keep it moist and covered, poke it once in a while to give it air, and let it be.  The pile builds gradually as materials come to hand.

The disadvantage to using the cold composting system  is that although the feeding process is less demanding, the results take a longer time than it would if you were using the  hot composting system. You can wait from 6 months to a year for a batch of compost to be produced via this method. It depends on what goes into the pile: soft “greens” like grass clippings and kitchen wastes break down much faster than woody “browns” or unshredded pieces.

On the plus side, absolutely no turning is required! But it’s a good idea to build the pile around an air stack, or to occasionally spike it with an aerator tool to help it along.

Here’s a sample of a cold compost pile.  In this picture, a tree had to be cut down, so the owners had the arborist put the tree through the shredder (smaller pieces speed up decompostition) and allowed the shredded wood and the sawdust to decompose at its own leisure.

Municipality workers use this method of using shredded trees to build a compost heap all the time in order to  create compost which they then use as mulch over their garden beds or place around the base of their trees (especially young trees).

To build a compost heap with this type of mulch attracts the decomposing organisms thus producing compost which feeds the soil and helps keep trees and plants healthy.  Perhaps you’ve noticed this type of mulch around trees planted around your community.

Composting tips: As with a hot compost, if you want better results, keep your cold piles moist, and add a variety of foods for the decomposer organisms to prosper. Also, the lower layers decompose first as new material is constantly being added to the top, so although a compost container isn’t necessary, having one may help you get at the finished stuff on the bottom.

Whatever you choose — a fancy container or simply build a compost heap in the corner of the yard — compost produced slowly needs to be covered or through time, a lot of its nutrients will be “weathered away.” This means the resulting material will still be valuable as a soil conditioner, but it will not be very effective as a fertilizer.

To summarize, making compost by using the cold composting system  can be as simple as taking your backyard waste, making a pile in the middle of a field, and leaving it there to decompose.

Now, for those of you who do not have big country yards or fields at your disposal but would prefer to use the cold composting method, there are other cold composting systems available.

These are  soil incorporation, postholing, rotation trenching, and mulching. .

In my next post I will explain the second method — soil incorporation. You may not have heard the term before, but you have probably seen it being done. So drop in to read about it.

Until then, stay happy, stay healthy!

Marcie