Mark Cullen: Low Maintenance Gardening = Mulch, Mulch, Mulch
By Lucas on Jun 21, 2013
By Mark Cullen
There is really no other activity in the garden that will both benefit your plants and free up your time quite like mulching.
You spread mulch to reduce weeding by about 90% the first year, reduce watering by up to 70% and provide an insulated area in the root zone of your trees, shrubs, evergreens, roses, perennials and veggies that encourages the very best in garden performance.
I love to mulch. I love it so much that I would classify spreading my favourite mulch as one of my top 3 garden activities. Why, its’ right up there with planting and composting!!
Now – anytime in the early summer – is the perfect time to add mulch because the hot, dry weather is just ahead of us. And the weeding season is upon us.
My favourite mulch is shredded cedar bark. You buy this stuff by the bag, cubic yard or the truck load. I spread bark mulch over most of my garden 5 cm thick. This seems to be the magic amount as less than this will allow weeds to push through quickly and more can smother otherwise healthy growth on your favourite plants.
I use other forms of mulch, especially in the veggie garden. I use 2 or 3 ‘wafers’ of clean straw (about 1/10 of a standard bale). At $4 bale, this works out to less than $.50 per tomato and man….does it save me a lot of time!
Just spread the straw under the plants and over the soil loosely. Rain will settle it down onto the soil, providing the same kind of insulation value that the bark mulch provides to your ornament plants.
Right now is a good time to fertilize too. I know that I have said this in recent weeks, but this is about the last week that you would apply a ‘once a season’ fertilizer like ‘Feed and Forget’ ‘Once and Done’ will do the trick. After this week you would be best to use the more traditional once-a-month granular products… or, if you are an organic gardener, use compost tea.
Make compost tea by stealing an old pillow case from the bottom of the linen closet. She won’t miss it, besides; it likely has a picture of snoopy on it, which is why it was at the bottom of the pile. ½ fill it with finished compost or composted cattle/steer manure. Hang it on a string into your rain barrel or a big container of water for 48 hours to one week. No longer or it will begin to smell very bad.
Apply this compost tea to everything that you grow every time you water. You can’t go wrong.
Time to get back to the mulch pile… ohhh, heaven, I am here!
Keep your knees dirty.
Mark
