To Mulch is Divine - Part 3 of Low Maintenance Gardening

No one gardening technique is perfect in every case, but mulching comes very close. Imagine if you can a garden where long term weed control is easy, watering is kept to a minimum, and winter protection is guaranteed, then consider this same technique also adds to the beauty of your garden. No other single effort of the gardener comes even close to providing benefits like these.

My wife and I struggled for years to keep a row of hybrid tea roses that line our driveway. In summertime the roses flourished in the sandy loam in our zone 5b location in the Rockies of southeastern B.C. provided we kept our watering up faithfully, but still we lost too many each year to the icy winds despite providing winter cover. A mulch of wood chips from our local sawmill has made all the difference. The sandy soil is kept evenly moist with a fraction of the watering. They have even thrived during our absence in spells of drought. The mulch also provides the base for winter protection. Each fall we top up the wood chip mulch over the roses and then in the spring it's a breeze to simply spread this out around the rose beds. It is clean and neat with little extra work. But its not just fussy roses that benefit. Even ordinarily hardy perennials and bulbs can suffer damage when exposed to dry frigid air. A generous layer of mulch will prevent this regardless of wild temperature fluctuation and lack of snow cover.

Our experiments over the years with landscape fabric and plastic as a base for the mulch have lead us to believe it is most often more advantageous and economical to skip them in favour of a thicker layer of mulch. Some weeds will eventually grow no matter what you do, but they pull up and out with incredible ease through 6 or more inches of mulch, but will cause a mess when tangled in fabric or plastic. Expect to top up the mulch occasionally. Mulch can be a variety of natural products (leaves, bark, rock, sawdust) and is pricey if packaged. For large areas contact one of the local sawmills, they can provide a suitable material (sometimes a mix of fir and cedar wood chips) in truck loads at a fraction of the cost. Don't be put off by larger wood chips, as long as there are enough finer pieces mixed in, it will work well.

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