Mulch vs autumn leaf fall....
roxanna
last year
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Newbie Question: Should I mulch in the fall?
Comments (8)Mike, If you have soil that doesn't dry well in the spring and you cover it with mulch, it may not dry till July. In my first year of gardening I covered my heavy clay soil with 6" of leaf in the fall. In the spring I had a heavy mat of wet leaves covering my garden and still had mud when all my neighbors (who didn't mulch) were planted. I ended up raking the mess off the garden and letting it dry. Live and learn. If you have a fast draining soil and dry springs, mulch to your hearts content. If you have a heavy clay soil or wet springs, I would try several different types of mulch to get a feel for how my soil would react to them. The past two years I've been using a year round straw mulch, and when planting time approaches I've raked back the straw in the areas that I direct sow in. It allows the soil to dry and warm up. What ever you do, be prepared to rake. No two years are the same. It's all one big experment. Enjoy. Dan...See MoreMulching beds with leaves...in autumn or spring?
Comments (13)I mulch with shredded leaves in the late fall. I wouldn't keep whole leaves on beds because they can become matted down. I have a vole problem, so I spread my leaves on the ground after it has frozen. Yes, that is usually in December, but that's the way it's gotta be in my garden. (This past year it wasn't till late January!) If you put the leaves down before the ground freezes, no matter what thickness, it just gives the little varmints a cozier place to dig into. Starting last year, I also add a generous sprinkling of crushed oyster shells over the beds, before putting down the leaves. The theory is that the rodents don't like digging through the sharp edges and will go away. I also now plant everything with oyster shells too. If you don't want to put down the leaves after the ground has frozen, perhaps you can just bag them and keep them somewhere dry until spring? Last year I kept three paper leaf-bags full in my garage. This spring, I used them as mulch in my veggie garden. It didn't dawn on me till almost summer how lucky I was not to have critters living in the bags! Don't know how I got away with that one! Now I'm wondering if I should do something else for this winter, like put the paper bags in plastic bags??? Not sure... Good luck! Dee...See MoreMulched, Mulched, Mulched. Daylilies all mulched.
Comments (23)Nate, it sounds like the following is too late, since your work has already begun, but for what it's worth: We had 4 new roofs (entire house) and everything that that entailed (remove old roofs, put on new + gutters & downspouts) and new stucco siding on one side of the house's addition (hence, remove all old stucco, too). Contractor also created a new profile for the eave over that side of the house; also made and installed a copper overhang for the window on that side. Not all of this was done at the same time; still, a lot of construction materials and debris. Used the same contractor and his small crew for everything. The crew was able to do the roofing job by accessing all the roofs from the patio; the main issue was roof debris that ended up on the ground. They were exceedingly careful and neat but even now, I do find the occasional nail and bits of roofing material. For the stucco work, however, they needed to erect and safely access scaffolding. I asked the contractor to try to protect a daylily bed directly under the side of the house needing that work. For various reasons, I couldn't dig up the plants in it, even though it contained some daylilies I value a lot (eg LAST SNOWFLAKE, NEON FLAMINGO, COWBOY SCARF, MABOU, Jack Carpenter patterns, and more), so he set up the scaffolding on a large piece of plywood that was placed on cinder blocks on either end of the bed (and with two blocks supporting the mid part of the wood). The crew had to access the scaffolding of course, so one end of the bed got badly trampled & the soil very compacted. Even so, given what had to be done to the house, and the time they spent doing it, the daylilies sailed through everything in near perfect condition. There was a lot of bent and torn foliage, but it was late autumn anyway so that didn't matter. Plus, it was the crowns I'd been concerned about. We plan to use the same guys to paint the house's exterior next spring. Since I don't know exactly which month that will be, I expect to have to dig up the entire bed. Even so, I'll ask the contractor to once again place scaffolding on plywood on cinder blocks. The idea will be to protect the soil from compaction so that I can use that bed again as soon as the work is done....See MoreWood chip mulch vs plastic vs landscape fabric as lancover, please com
Comments (25)Just three years ago, where my house and yard is now was just a field of weeds. On my half acre lot, I've mulched with between 500 and 600 bags of leaves from neighbors, ground up, and applied thickly to growing beds, spread regularly and thinly on the lawn. In some of the areas where I wasn't going to pay much attention to for a few years, I put down a thick layer of newspaper before piling on the leaf mulch. In areas where I am actively gardening, I just pile on the leaves each fall and winter(already started collecting leaves this year). I already have absolutely no weed "problem" in my garden areas. Yes, the mulch keeps down almost all of the weeds. Also, some weeds sprout and come through the mulch. The advantage of the mulch is that the soil underneath never is hard, dry, and impossible to remove weeds from. I walked through my garden often that first year in particular, to remove weeds when small and well BEFORE they can ever go to seed. Anything that can grow from any small piece of the subject weed or that included seeds(along borders, etc., I put in a trash can for removal from my property. More benign things go in the compost pile. But they are very easy to pull from well mulched soil, and there just aren't many of them. The casual way I deal with weeding is an indication that just the organic mulch is all I need. I have seen, heard, and experienced horrible things with landscape fabric, and I won't subject myself to that....See More- roxanna thanked deanna in ME Barely zone 6a, more like 5b
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