Mulch.
The word doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like a Shakespeare sonnet, does it? But for everything the word lacks, the actual stuff, when placed on your garden beds around flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs, compensates by helping your plants live longer, keep cool, stay moist and look better overall.
When temperatures climbed to 100° recently here in Texas, I dragged myself out in the heat to mulch the most exposed areas of my garden. Yes, it sucked, and I chided myself for not having done it sooner. But my plants thanked me for it by not wilting or dying in the sudden extreme heat.
There are many kinds of materials used as mulch. Cold climate gardeners sometimes use black plastic sheeting in early spring to boost soil temperatures. In recent years, tomato growers have come to value a red plastic mulch sheeting that apparently boosts fruit production due to the red color spectrum rays.
Rock and gravel can also be considered mulch when placed on top of the soil around plants. Although rocks, like plastic, don't provide any nutritional value to the soil, they can look nice in the right landscape. I use rocks around many woody-stemmed herbs, especially my rosemarys and lavenders, which require excellent drainage and don't like having soil splashed up onto them when watered.
Heck, you can use just about anything as mulch, if your intention is purely to suppress weeds. Some of the dahlia growers with whom I correspond even use old pieces of carpet between plants.
For our purposes, however, we're going to discuss organic mulches. That is, untreated plant material used as mulch that actually breaks down and benefits the soil.
Kinds of Organic Mulch
Go to your local Big Home Improvement Chainstore on any given Sunday, and you'll see a row of perplexed people checking out the mountainous bags of mulch piled and lined up in the landscaping area. Most folks aren't sure what to use, or why, or how for that matter, when mulching with natural materials.
Here are the common types of mulches offered in stores, ranked worst to best of how effective I find them to be. (When shopping for mulch, look for "native" in the product description. This means the materials used to make the mulch were from your area, and the mulch itself will be better suited to your soil as it decomposes.)
- Pine Bark Blech. It floats away, and is slow to break down when it does stick around. A common choice among people who don't know any better.
