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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Winter rye or eelgrass mulch over winter?

11 years ago

Am I better off planting winter rye in my veg. garden or mulching it with ~4 lbs of eelgrass per square foot over the winter? I would spade in either in springtime when working the soil. Which option would be more beneficial to the soil in the long run? What are some of the tradeoffs that would influence this decision? Soil is currently fine, rather sandy (this is Cape Cod, after all), but the garden is producing well. I'm looking to maintain soil quality, and not trying to improve barren soil.

I'm already composting eelgrass as much as I can, so wouldn't be able to compost the additional eelgrass that would be mulched on the garden. Eelgrass is free for the coat of loading and a 1/4 mile pickup trip; winter rye seed cost is not significant.

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Comments (5)

darth_weeder
11 years ago
The rye works well for me and I've never had a problem with killing it in the spring like some have proclaimed.Rye sends down pretty deep roots and produces a lot of biomass.
As for the eel grass, 4 pounds per square foot sounds pretty impressive. When I've dealt with it it dried out weighing next to nothing and blew around in the wind. Also it took a long time to become part of the soil food web. That was my experience with the stuff anyway..
Try the rye this year especially since you're making compost out of the eel grass.
Sort of the best of both worlds.
Since both are relatively inexpensive I don't think you can go wrong with either.
Good luck with your decision.
elisa_z5
11 years ago
Darth weeder -- have you been able to kill the winter rye by just spading, or are you using machinery? I planted winter rye one year and it seemed difficult to get rid of, but I may have had it mixed up with the quack grass, which I didn't know yet that I had, so it might not have been the rye that was the problem. I have heard you need to till it and disk it both.
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This area has been dug out to 2-3 feet, below the hardpan and loam subsoil to the deeper sandy subsoil. It was back filled by mixing in a lot of organic matter followed by two years of turning under the summers wood chip compost mulch. It is terraced on a moderate-light sloped hillside so that the downhill side is raised 1-2 feet, held back by a log retaining wall. The natural soil at the side of the retaining wall was loam to sandy loam with very little clay. As you can imagine, it normally drains quite nicely. The rye was planted to help break up remaining clay clods (it was all shovel dug, not tilled) and to provide a surface mulch.
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Thanks for all the advice and I'm really glad I asked this question. As I read various articles on the internet about winter mulching, it looks like maybe the idea is to mulch *around* the plant so as to maintain uniform soil temperatures around the root and therefore prevent the ground from heaving from freezing and thawing, rather than to keep the plant warm which is what I originally thought. In that case I wouldn't put the mulch on top of the plant (though that one article I mentioned does seem to suggest doing that -- though maybe I'm misreading it). And maybe the thyme will be fine unmulched but not the oregano. I'm hoping the oregano will at least survive my 6b winter if not keep its leaves green. Whether either the thyme or oregano will remain green during the winter is anyone's guess, but from what folks are saying I shouldn't be surprised if they don't.
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Kimmsr
11 years ago
I have used Winter, Field, Cereal Rye as a winter cover crop for somewhere around 45 years and have never had a problem with it regrowing when cut, or knocked down, before seeds formed. The Rodale Institute has done extensive work on crimping Winter Rye to be used as a mulch and the USDA has now found this process to be something worthwhile, I would suspect this would not be something they would promote if regrowth were a problem.

Which to use will depend on how available one or the other is. If Eel grass is more readily available, and free, that is what you should be using. However, for others of us the Rye seed is more readily available even though we need to pay for it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Crimping Winter Rye
darth_weeder
11 years ago
elisa,
I'm not sure about the confusion between quackgrass and winter rye. Maybe I don't know what quack grass is but the rye grows 5-6 feet tall. I've weed wacked it down, used a grass whip and a lawn mower to kill it.
All worked well.
Wishing nothing but success.
Kimmsr
11 years ago
Quack Grass is an invasive, noxious, perennial weedy grass that spreads by rhizomes as well as seeds. For some of us it is the only grass we can grow, but is a pain in the planting beds.

Here is a link that might be useful: About Quack Grass

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