Best mulch for tomatoes?
Sheila Schmitz
9 years ago
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What is the best cheap mulch for vegetables around here?
Comments (4)Absolutely free & a good source of nitrogen is your own herbicide free grass clippings, but if you don't have a lawn maybe you can ask a friend to call you when they're going to mow & you can go pick up immediately. It's important to dry them right away. When I've bagged up for a day or so before drying it was harder to dry because the matted together. Also shorter clippings dry faster because the separate easier. This is how I do it: Mow on a dry day, spread out on a tarp to dry, then use to mulch your vegetable garden. I prefer to spread a light 1/2" layer and build up to about an inch around greens & more around larger plants. When you put them in a bucket & spread by the pinch it is done rather quickly because they're loose & easy to move around with your fingers without damaging plants. Don't bother with a tool. Free used coffee grounds from coffee shops also work well when topped with dried grass clippings. The grass prevents splashing up of coffee grounds onto vegetables and evens out the mulch for a neater appearance. If you have access to free straw or old hay either works fine for larger plants like cucumbers & tomatoes. I mulch tomatoes because I don't want weeds growing or the soil drying out. I haven't considered that it kept the soil cooler. I gather about 3 straw bales in the fall & leave out in the rain on an unplanted part of the garden until the next late spring when I start mulching strawberries & larger plants again....See MoreIs it always best to mulch?
Comments (8)Larry, You're welcome. Bon, I don't know how to answer your question because so many variables are involved. Much would depend on how dry or wet your ground and mulch both were at the same time. I've never had a thermal heat issue, but then my area tends to be dry most of the time, so my mulch is dry a lot more often than it is wet. If the ground is soggy, I'm not mulching anyway because it is too wet to cut the grass and I don't have grass clippings to use as mulch if we aren't mowing. I'm not wetting my mulch with a hose or sprinkler because the drip irrigation lines drip the water down beneath the emitters, so my grass clipping, hay, straw and chopped/shredded leaf mulch is mostly dry. Our garden is so large that no one area gets too much new mulch piled on top of the old mulch at one time. If each bed gets a half-inch of grass clippings added per week, we're having a pretty good year. My mulch usually stays so dry that it doesn't decompose into compost until the following year. This past year was so dry that the mulch on most of the raised beds didn't even decompose over the winter....that mulch was just sitting there as dry grass clippings when it was time to rototill the mulch into the soil in order to plant this spring's crops. If I am too busy with something else to use the grass clippings immediately, Tim dumps them from the mower's grass catcher into a large child's wading pool. Sometimes, by the time he is done, the grass is piled up in that pool about waist-high. If there has been any recent rain, and if there's some leaves or other carbon source mixed in with those grass clippings, the middle of the pile can heat up fast and begin decomposing quickly---within a few days. If it takes me a week to get around to using those clippings as mulch, they often are very hot and partially decomposed when I take them out of the wading pool and haul them, one wheelbarrow load at a time, to the garden. You'd think they were so hot that they'd harm the plants through thermal heat, but they don't. However, I'm only adding a thin layer to the already-existing mulch. If I was laying them on thicker, the clippings might create too much heat. Last week Tim dumped grass clippings mixed with some chopped up autumn leaves into the wading pool on, hmmm....probably Tuesday evening. Today I used them to mulch newly planted tomato plants and those clippings were already so hot in the middle of the pile that they were decomposing. Since I spread them out so thin, I wasn't worried about the heat. If I'd been planning to put a thick layer of them somewhere today, I would have ditched that plan and spread them out and let them dry and cool down before using them. I think you'll just have to try it and see what works for you. I think our plants are so hot from ordinary Oklahoma heat and sunlight that the thermal gain from fresh clippings doesn't even faze them. I will add that I never fertilize our lawn so am not putting a lot of extra nitrogen on the grass. If someone regularly fertilizes their lawn, their clippings may get pretty hot and provide more thermal heat than their plants would like. For what it is worth, I've tried to smother bermuda grass and Johnson grass with 2 or 3 feet of fresh grass clippings piled on top of the grass in the dead of summer.. I was hoping the thermal heat gain would cook their roots and stolons. It didn't. Dawm...See MoreBest Commercial Mulch?
Comments (1)Buy a bale of straw for mulch. Hard to beat that. ;) Then there is newspapers, cardboard, and compost. good mulch available at Lowes or Home Depot Bags of Mushroom Compost is available at both here. Check out the Soil, Mulch & Compost forum here for many other suggestions. Dave...See MoreWhat mulch is best for containers?
Comments (8)Bark does break down, even as it sits on the surface of soil, especially if the nuggets are small... they can break down pretty quickly. And soil nutrients get used up awfully fast in any kind of container... you do have to keep a close eye on adequate feeding when you are hoping for fruit production. It's not like it's something that cannot be corrected, but it is an important thing to keep in mind anywhere you use bark. Nitrogen is easy to add and best of all, if you are open minded to this idea, it's free! http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/organic/msg0623420619185.html Balance is key, however, as too much nitrogen causes too much foliage growth and little fruit. Just be aware and be ready to make corrections if necessary... all will be fine :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Gardenweb discussion...See MoreSheila Schmitz
9 years agoTracy West
9 years ago- Sheila Schmitz thanked daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
- Sheila Schmitz thanked daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
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