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Gardening in Oz

Sugar cane mulch

20 years ago

I put the mulch about 10cm's thick after talking to colin campbell at our local nursery.

That was 6 weeks ago and there is none left,it has all broken down and the soil looks great. How long is it supposed to last?

Very expensive if I have to do this too often

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Comments (4)

gardenlen
20 years ago
g'day happyjacq,

that's what it is supposed to do reckon you should have laid it around 10 or 12"s thick tho'. why not use the less expensive fodder mulches eg.,. spoiled lucern hay or pasture grass mulches they'll do more for your gardens and don't contain the chemical residues that sugar cane mulch does. i only use the above green mulches on my gardens and i don't fertlilise.

len

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User
20 years ago
HI HJ I have a very thick layer on S C Mulch on my garden beds and it has not broken down yet, did you buy that expensive bale around $10 from you know where. We go down to Jacobs Wells Way with the trailer and buy a Round for $15-$20. We have been down twice lately as I have lots of garden beds. I reckon there would be about 25 bales in a Round well worth the trip only a few dollars for petrol also there are lovely beaches down that way.

I am surprised that it has broken down so fast, the lucerne I had on the roses first didn't last long, and I find the SC Mulch is so much better and cheaper, as the lucerne has too many seeds in it and I am forever pulling out weeds. I wont waste my money on that again. I complained to the produce store and they said thats the way we get it.

Len us city dwellers, cannot buy those things cheap they cost more than SC Mulch, a mouldy bale of spoilt lucerne down the Produce Store is $8:95 a compress bale of SC Mulch cost a little more but you get twice as much, a bale of SC Mulch down south cost $3 but it is smaller, so you can see why we use it. Cheers..MM.
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Tania, I looked for photos of sugar cane mulch in place in a garden (not something I would find in this part of the world :)) and it seems to be a shredded product. First, your seeds will not germinate under it, and second, I don't think you could keep seeds moist enough to germinate on top of it. One of the purposes of any mulch is to keep weed seeds from germinating, and the mulch won't know a good seed from weed. You would do better pulling the mulch back where you want to sow the seeds, pushing it back into place when the seedlings have gained a little size, or sowing your annuals in pots and transplanting them.
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Hi HJ yes I had that problem too, as I had bought punnets of salvia's everlasting daisy, more salvia's so I just parted the mulch and planted the seedlings leaving a good size opening, that was three weeks ago. Sadly I dont have many plants left as there must be some kind of insect on all that cane mulch that is eating them as fast as I plant them. We bought our SCM from the cane farmers down Jacob Wells very wet, but if you bought yours in plastic covered bales from Bunnings there may not be any insects in them, you cant win. So I got some more seedling and planted them near the edge of the garden beds pushing the mulch away from them, if these survive I will put the mulch around them when they are a lot bigger. Seeds well I cant help there, probably best to grow them somewhere else and transplant when bigger... Cheers..MM.
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Hi Ashke, I've been using both for about three years now. Lucerne is very rich and breaks down quickly, much loved by worms. It's the double cream of mulches and dry-soil improvers. Quite high in N. Sugarcane Mulch also rocks, but is much slower to break down. Has 1 per cent N, according to award-winning nurseryman in my area. I love it for tomatoes as it provides a moisture retentive barrier for longer than lucerne and isn't quite so rich. The Light White of mulches, but nowhere near as good a soil improver. Cheers, Grub.
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plantsplus
20 years ago
Use the baled mulch not the "chaff" type shredded expensive stuff and it will last much longer (and also take longer to enrich your soil) It is however more
difficult to use around a closely planted garden bed.
I always fluff it out (dont use biscuits as they dont allow the water through) and spread about one bale to 3-4 sq.m. It lasts for at least 9 months. If its tightly packed and damp it will break down much quicker.
I notice some of the bagged mulch is sold as organic. I asked the supplier I use and he tells me that they do use knock down type weedicide pre planting but do not use any chemicals on the cane when it is growing. The biggest problem is with the mould spores which can develop in the cane. It is advisable to wear a dust mask when spreading.
Genny_BP
20 years ago
Tumbulgum ("The Meeting of the Waters") on the Tweed Valley Way, travelling towards Murwillumbah, has 3 oulets selling Cane Mulch @$3.50 per.

It's a lovely little historic village, with a good pub, too

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