Growing your own mulch
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Featured Answer
Sort by:Oldest
Comments (35)
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoRelated Discussions
is it cheaper to grow your own?
Comments (58)This is such a great question as I have pondered it myself while gardening. It is true I get so much more out of gardening than just the monetary cost, but in today's economy, every dollar counts in a young family like ours. In an effort to have more organic produce available at a "sustainable" price (LOL), I decided to try growing my own. The following are my challenges and what I've done. Hopefully it can help you: Poor soil = Raised Beds: We have clay marl in this area, not conducive to veggie gardening. So I decided to do a raised bed. Cedar lumber, railroad ties, and pavers (recommended for raised beds) are all quite expensive so I went on www.freecycle.com and craigslist.com. I was able to get 200 pavers / bricks for $20. Droughts in Central FL = Expensive Water: The raised beds help conserve H20 bc you are watering a smaller area more efficiently. I added soaker hoses I found in a neighbor's trash (really). Cost was zero. Mulch is free at a local park where the county gov't shreds it, puts it in a pile and you just have to bring your own container. I'm sure your county has a similar set-up. Soil: Now this was expensive. A 2.5 cf bag of garden or potting soil is about $10 here and the bed I have takes about 10 bags. So I scoured the net for Home Depot and Lowes coupons. I found several $10 off of $25 purchase. So I methodically bought my soil in $25 purchase increments in order to get the $10 savings. I spent some more on compost because I don't have a compost pile. I add calcium to my tomatoes by saving egg shells. Transplants vs. Seeds: It's nice to have an instant garden with transplants but inflation has hit them too. They are much more costly now. You can get seeds for 1/3 the price and have 20 to 50 more plants. Plus transplants often have diseases and pests from the nursery which you are INTRODUCING to your new 'virgin' garden! So, I buy the seeds and follow the french intensive/sq. foot garden method. Jiffy mix + pots works too but that was too costly this year. Pests and Diseases: Unfortunately, here in FL we have year round bugs, fungus and blights. I have tried very hard to go homegrown organic, but so far I have failed. I had to resort to buying Organocide ($15) in order to treat blight in my tomatoes. Today I found corn earworms in my corn and fruitworms in my tomatoes. A cursory net search revealed that the preferred organic control (a predatory wasp) is $90. Yeah, who can afford that? So, tomorrow I am going to buy some BT at $9 a bottle at Home Depot. It's not conventional pesticide, true....but I'd rather get the wasps! So far, the major costs have been pest / disease control. If you want to plant a garden on the cheap- you definitely can....just think outside of the box and ignore all of the glossy Lowes/Ace/HD ads...they just want your $$$$$$$...scour the net/eBay for coupons, check out freecycle and craigslist. You can even rent power tools for FREE from local libraries (check out swap and borrow sites). GOOD LUCK!!!!...See MoreAnother Reason To 'Grow Your Own'
Comments (27)I've been successfully taking oregano oil by North American Spice Company for any type of bacterial, viral, or fungal infection since 2005. I first heard about it on a show called Know the Cause. Then my friend started talking about it getting rid of a wart on her foot that shed been fighting forever. I had a rock hard bumP on my toe and figured it would be a corn (sorry, I know this is probably gross) it had been there for about a year and I kept forgetting to ask my dr. and I bought a generic brand of oregano oil, and Rubbed a drop on. By the the end of the day it was almost gone. It didn't vanish completely in 2 days with that brand, so I bought the more well known brand, and used it for a day and it was gone. I had was hit with a bad case of strep throat shOrtly after on a weekend (I can diagnose myself, I've had tonsil ides, and strep throat enough to tell the difference) and rather than go to the ER I had my husband stop at the local health food store and get me a bottle of oregano oil. All our tiny store had was the pill form of North Americsn Spice Company brand. I already had the bought a book written by Dr Cass Ingram called the cure is in the cupboard so that helped me to know how much oregano oil I should take bi think I took a pill every hour for the first day. Within a day 24 hours I felt completely fine and I will tell you with synthetic anitibotics it takes me 3-5 days. It is effective on colds also that normally have to run their coarse. We can be completely over a cold in 1/2 the time as anybody stricken with a cold at the same time. My husband, kids and I have been using it successfully since then, and rarely go the Dr anymore. 3 of my friends use it, and 1 of those friends is a doctor. My sister, who is married to a pharmacist, uses it. Many of you have probably heard of it, or already use it, but for anyone who hasn't I wanted to explain the benefits thoroughly. Sorry so long. I probably should have said it is a powerful natural antibiotic and the first time I saw it on Know The Cause, the were touting that it had been successful in killing the bird flu in laboratory testing. I believe them. Dr. Ingram and Doug kaufmann (Know The Cause) Often appear at the "Health Food Center" on Penn in Okc, to answer questions about it and other natural health products. I would follow up by saying that anytime I take a hefty dose of oil of oregano, I always take some type of probiotic from the health food store. You can now sometimes find probiotics in a pharmacy as more people are becoming aware of the importance and the body's general need for probiotics. My brother in law who graduated from pharmacy school about 3 years ago mentioned to me that I should follow up with a probiotic after using any type of antibiotic, to help your body good bacteria replenish itself from being wiped out by the antibiotic. So I was surprised that they are promoting the use of probiotics now, because I had never had a dr. or pharmacists mention such a thing to me before. I think western medicine is slowly catching on. I just hope the pharmaceutical companies really don't gain control over all of the natural health medicines we now have the right to use....See Moremulching the garden
Comments (3)Tree, I collect old hay from local ranchers. Sometimes you can find it listed on Craigslist or Freecycle and all you have to do is haul it away. I am very careful to check and ensure it was not sprayed with herbicides. If the answer is not a firm "no, it was not", I don't use it. This year I am using the last bales from a huge amount (over 200 bales) of native pasture grass/hay given to me a couple of years ago. I'm starting to worry about what I'll use when I use up these last few bales. We have a grass catcher on our lawn mower and catch all the grass clippings and use them as mulch. We have a large lawn and it does not even come close to providing all the mulch we need, but the grass clippings help. We overseed our lawn with rye grass seed in September and cut it all winter long, catching those clippings in the grass catcher and putting them on the beds. That gets me off to a decent start with mulching even before planting season starts. When I have to buy hay, I only buy alfalfa, which unfortunately is very expensive so I don't buy it often. Alfalfa is a broad-leaved legume so it cannot be sprayed by the persistent herbicides that have led to contaminated compost, mulch and manure in the last decade. You can mulch with anything, and when I mulch I like to put down a layer of cardboard or several sheets of newspaper as the first layer because that helps keep seeds from sprouting in the soil beneath the mulch. You can use chopped or shredded autumn leaves. I collect them in fall, bag them up and save them for spring. You can use pine bark fines or any other finely shredded or ground mulch. I especially like to use a product sold as "sold conditioner" that contains humus and pine bark fines. It is a 'feeding mulch' that breaks down pretty quickly and enriches the soil, which is really great for clay soil. You can use any form of bark mulch if you choose. Some people worry it ties up nitrogen in the soil as it decomposes, but I've never found that to be an issue with bark that is on the surface of the ground. It could be an issue with bark rototilled into the soil. If available in your area, you can use pecan shells (often available from companies that process pecans) or pine straw (we don't have lots of pine trees in southcentral OK but I assume at least some parts of OK have them). If you were near a sawmill or woodworking company that lets people come collect their sawdust, you could use it. Almost any material will work. Sometimes if you see tree-trimming companies cutting and shredding tree limbs in your area, if you ask nicely they will come dump a load of the shredded tree trimmings on your property. It saves them the cost of paying a disposal fee to dump that material at a local dump. I start out with a thin layer of grass clippings on the garden as the soil warms up in spring, then layer on more mulch continually each week as we mow. Because our grass clippings from our own lawn are chemical free and don't contain a lot of weed seeds, I prefer to put them on the raised beds and I use the old, spoiled hay in the pathways and in areas where we don't have raised beds, like in the corn patch. When I pull weeds (before they have set seeds) in the veggie garden, I just place them on top of the mulched beds where they will serve as part of the mulch. As they break down, they put back into the soil the nutrition they absorbed from it while growing. You even can grow your own mulch by planting something that produces a lot of biomass, and harvesting it regularly to use as mulch. I use some cover crops in this way, mowing them off short (but not so short they won't regrow) and putting the clippings in the garden as mulch. You can use some clovers, rye grass and buckwheat in this way. I also grow comfrey strictly so I can cut its leaves and use them as mulch or as fodder for the compost piles. If you have half-finished compost, you can use it as mulch too. As the garden season progresses and you remove spent plants, if they are disease-free, you can add them to the beds as mulch. It won't look as nice as clean straw or hay or bark mulch, but it does the job. I even chop up corn stalks and use them as mulch after the corn is through producing. It doesn't really matter what you use or how you use it as long as it is safe and isn't introducing chemicals or disease pathogens into your growing areas. If you live in town more so than out in the country, big box stores or nurseries would be your best bet. If you need a lot, some soil suppliers or even some municipalities sell mulch in bulk but sometimes it costs so much to have it delivered that you don't really spend that much less than you would have spent on bagged mulch. Dawn...See MoreCommercial lemon crop down....aren’t you happy you grow your own?
Comments (18)Lol Bob! I am anxiously awaiting my ST lemons to ripen (I’ve got one or two that are huge and starting to turn). I can’t wait to try lemon bars with those! I spent all morning working on my trees. I moved all my grafts into slightly larger pots and still have a few more trees to move up. I found two with two types of scale that had been snuck on by ants (on my red lime and cocktail grapefruit). Yuck! Citrus emergency last night as a result. I wiped them down and cut off the part of the brack they were one. Luckily, they were quite localized....See MoreNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agookoutdrsman
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agookoutdrsman
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoslowpoke_gardener
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoslowpoke_gardener
6 years agonowyousedum
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agohazelinok
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
5 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoslowpoke_gardener
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoMacmex
5 years agoslowpoke_gardener
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoslowpoke_gardener
5 years agoslowpoke_gardener
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years agoslowpoke_gardener
5 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
5 years ago
Related Stories
FARM YOUR YARD6 Things to Know Before You Start Growing Your Own Food
It takes time and practice, but growing edibles in the suburbs or city is possible with smart prep and patience
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSHow to Grow Your Own Luscious Cherries
Nope, they’re not the easiest fruit to grow. But with spectacular blossoms and pies as possibilities, cherries are sure worth a try
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSHow to Grow Your Own Sweet Summer Crops
This guide will help any gardener get started on growing the freshest warm-season veggies and berries for summer
Full StoryFRUIT TREESHow to Grow Your Own Persimmons
Sturdy and easy to care for, these trees offer bright fruit through winter — and keeping them in bounds is no sweat
Full StoryFLOWERSHerb Garden Essentials: Grow Your Own Fragrant Lavender
This do-it-all plant is ideal for almost any garden, and its uses are abundant around the home
Full StoryGARDENING GUIDESGrow Your Own Privacy: How to Screen With Plants and Trees
Use living walls to lower your home and garden's exposure while boosting natural beauty in your landscape
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSHerb Garden Essentials: Grow Your Own Tasty, Frilly Dill
Flavor your food and attract butterflies with easy-care (and pretty) dill in the garden
Full StoryFRUIT TREESHow to Grow Your Own Juicy Plums
Easier than other stone fruits and with a variety of colors to choose from, plums are a versatile garden addition
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSHow to Grow Your Own Peaches and Nectarines
Make gardening a little sweeter with these juicy fruits, which you can eat after plucking or preserve for later
Full StoryEDIBLE GARDENSHow to Grow Your Own Apricots
Velvety fruit, pretty blossoms and interesting bark make apricot trees a delight — and they’re great for smaller gardens
Full Story
AmyinOwasso/zone 6bOriginal Author