References You can mulch them up with your lawn mower or mulcher, or you can leave them whole. Here I’ll explain the 3 types of mulch, and how to mulch your garden. We know ads can be annoying, but they’re what allow us to make all of wikiHow available for free. There are synthetic mulches and natural mulches, and each has its pros and cons. Please help us continue to provide you with our trusted how-to guides and videos for free by whitelisting wikiHow on your ad blocker. "image": "https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/acropolis-wp-content-uploads/2018/06/mulch.png", "@type": "HowToSupply", Why Renting is a Better Option, What Famous Ancient Structures Would Cost to Build Today, Eight Reasons Why Renting Is Better than Owning, 16 Motivating Podcasts to Help You Work Harder. I spent the day working on my garden, taking care of my chickens and spreading out my homemade garden mulch to prevent weeds from spreading through the garden… You can also layer cardboard and other organic material, including compost and leaves, to make a sort-of DIY soil for new garden beds or flower beds. In this case, 100% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. (To speed things up, consider using a composting activator to get finished compost faster. "tool": { Straw : You can use lightweight straw to protect young vegetables in the early part of the growing season. To receive our 3 Home, Garden, Recipe and Simple Life articles each week, sign up below for our free email list. Vegetable Garden Fertilizers have everything your crops need to thrive, promoting crop yields and pest resistance. straw. }. "url": "https://www.bigrentz.com/how-to-guides/make-best-vegetable-garden-mulch#GrassClippingsPlantsLoveItInModeration" gravel, river rocks, lava rock. Woodchip mulch has great benefits for gardening and landscaping. "description": "Making mulch for your vegetable garden is one of the best things you can do for the health of your plants. Diseases like blight can wipe out an entire crop. The best mulch is chemical-free. When you plant, brush back some of the wood chips, dig a hole, put the plant in the hole, back fill the hole with the dirt, and then smooth the wood chips back over the soil. If you have a large or small vegetable garden or even a container garden, straw or hay are examples of cheap mulch ideas you can consider if you don’t mind how it looks. You can also use an electric leaf shredder to chop the leaves. If your lawnmower collects clippings in a bag, you can apply those clippings as a mulch layer in the garden—just make sure you don't put grass treated with herbicides in your vegetable garden. If your mower has a bag to collect grass, simply pour the contents of the bag into the leaf mulch when you're done. First, a weed barrier like cardboard is laid down to smother weeds. Still, finding your hard work in the garden destroyed by disease is not something you want to experience. But the composting terminology police are not going to show up at your house if you choose to sprinkle compost on your lawn to cover up and kill weeds.

"@type": "HowToSupply", Composting Gardening Home composting is a process that uses natural decomposition to transform landscape and kitchen waste into a rich soil amendment that does wonders for a garden. We rent a lot of them, so we’ll be happy to help you with that. "url": "https://www.bigrentz.com/how-to-guides/make-best-vegetable-garden-mulch#CompostSlightlyFunkyIsBest" Cardboard Making mulch for your vegetable garden is one of the best things you can do for the health of your plants. But for beginner gardeners, we will take a closer look at what this dye is and how mulching is done correctly. This will, after a few months, kill everything underneath it. Homemade potting soil for transplanting seedlings. Composting Leaves . These days I use a mower to coarsely shred my leaves, which I then use as winter mulch in the vegetable garden. Ideal summer mulches include leaf mulch, leaf mulch mixtures, and compost. The best vegetable garden mulches are those that your property produces itself, such as grass clippings, leaves and compost made by combining kitchen and garden wastes. Here are 3 no-till gardening methods to have great soil: sheet mulch, just mulch, and square foot gardening. ", Mulch is a beneficial layer or cover which is spread directly on top of the soil in your garden. Just like with any decomposed mulch, worms and other beneficials in the soil will mix the compost into the soil for you and distribute it. Leave 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) of space between the mulch and the base of the plants, or enough room so the mulch isn't touching the plants. I have a lot of respect for Ruth Stout. "name": "mini excavator"

Really, you can’t go wrong with homemade wood chips as a mulch material. This gardener claims that light reflecting off the white paper made her peppers more spicy.

We like the ease of weeding raised beds and want to try mulch in them. When there are SO many great cheap mulch sources, there’s no reason to buy it at the garden center. sawdust. I almost threw the clippings out, and I have a rather large garden!

Ideally, you’d mix shredded paper with other compost materials like leaves to have a more diverse organic mulch. Dead plants are easier to dig up than living ones, and they’ll form the nitrogen base for your new garden bed, too. Adding mulch to my vegetable garden has decreased weeds to almost none. Adding edging to your garden beds full of annual flowers and perennial flowers makes them look more polished, helps keep mulch in place, and boosts curb appeal. Compost may be homemade, or purchased in bags or bulk. Decomposing shredded leaves leach nitrogen into the soil and prevent erosion, so your garden will be that much more productive come next spring.

},{ Wood decomposes more slowly than leaves, so this would be a good mulch for long term use. The exception is plastic mulch, applied in early spring on a vegetable garden prior to planting: It will raise the soil temperature to give seeds a healthy early start. This gardener claims that light reflecting off the white paper made her peppers more spicy. And mulch you must.

One drawback of using compost as mulch is that bacteria from food or composted manure can introduce pathogens that will harm your plants, which organic matter like leaves may not. },{ Mulch is placed upon it. If you grow hungry plants like lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, you’ll get higher yields with the nitrogen-rich soil that a regular dose of grass clippings, yard waste, or other garden compost can provide as organic mulches. "@context": "https://schema.org/", You can either gather leaves by raking up ones that fall in the autumn, or collect the leaves that you prune off plants. Store-bought wood mulch (often sold as bark mulch or red wood mulch) is factory-processed into uniform-sized bits with similar chemical properties. Most plants grow better in soil that is slightly acidic. Avoid using the leaves from walnut and eucalyptus trees, as these can prevent other plants from growing. ... Making Homemade Woodchips. If your compost heap, bin, or pile is all plant garden waste, like leaves, you can use it whenever you’d like. Plant-based mulch includes the benefit of containing nitrogen, the active ingredient in chemical-based, store-bought fertilizer. In fact, not only your hair but animal hair also has the same effect. All of these, alone or in combination, can work: As you can see, a lot of stuff that gets thrown away can be saved to make mulch. Let it rot, on top. By using our site, you agree to our. If you grow hungry plants like lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, you’ll get higher yields with the nitrogen-rich soil that a regular dose of grass clippings, yard waste, or other garden compost can provide as organic mulches. "name": "Compost" To make mulch from wood, rent a wood chipper for about $75 a day—a worthwhile investment when you consider that mulch can cost from $22 to $30 a yard. Composted steer or chicken manure works best, and it will help speed up the decomposition of the mulch. "@type": "HowToStep", Surprisingly, your hair can also be used as a fertilizer. }], "text": "There are two main ways to use cardboard in your garden. Do I need any kind of chemical to add to my mulch making? The mulch nourishes and protects the soil. Use the same food waste as you would for compost. Hay was no longer a safe choice due to risk of herbicide contamination, ditto for manure. Shredding the leaves will help them to decompose in the garden, and this will provide the soil with nutrients. ", (To speed things up, consider using a composting activator to get finished compost faster.). Decomposers, like bacteria, fungi, insects, nematodes, earthworms and other composting critters, are a composter’s best friend. Decomposing shredded leaves leach nitrogen into the soil and prevent erosion, so your garden will be that much more productive come next spring. Dumping a heavy load of clippings from your lawnmower onto your garden could do more harm than good. "text": "Before we talk about composting and mulch, a short detour into terminology. Recipe for Mulch. Irvine, CA 92614, experts at Michigan State University recommend, claims that light reflecting off the white paper made her peppers more spicy, layer cardboard and other organic material, Oregon State University’s Extension office, Grass Clippings: Plants Love It, In Moderation. I have just trimmed my trees and I looked at the small pieces of, "Have a large garden and wish to suppress weeds naturally. By Kath Irvine | LastUpdated September 30, 2017. By Robin Sweetser. Let your garden take that sensitive information to the ground as compost.

"name": "Grass Clippings: Plants Love It, In Moderation", Spread mulch around your plants; you'll kick out weeds, preserve moisture, and add the perfect finishing touch to garden beds and borders. – Geoff Lawton.

You can also layer cardboard and other organic material, including compost and leaves, to make a sort-of DIY soil for new garden beds or flower beds. With one application, it can easily last the whole season. Organic vegetable garden mulching options require less preparation. By using this service, some information may be shared with YouTube. In this article, I will show you the best DIY Vegetable Garden Fertilizer recipes and tricks that every backyard gardener should know. Email. Mix the powder in the soil prior to planting. Bark and wood mulch can be used on its own or combined with leaf mulch. "name": "Leaves: Cut Them Into Baby Bites", Homemade organic mulch contains a mixture of leaves, bark, and wood from different species. Nitrogen-rich plant matter also helps to create acidic soil. "@type": "HowTo", I encourage you to test a few different mulches and see which you prefer. },{ This article was co-authored by Maggie Moran. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each homemade mulch option. Anyone who’s had some kind of experience gardening and landscaping knows what mulch dye is. When you deep mulch year after year you don’t have to till the garden, just add more mulch in the fall, make rows in the spring and plant. },{ The different sizes and species in the mulching material will decompose at different rates, which makes your soil more diverse, too.

Don’t just dump your leaf mulch pile onto your garden. ", The different sizes and species in the mulching material will decompose at different rates, which makes your soil more diverse, too. Collect leaves. Worms are hard workers in the garden. It was a matter of using what was available. "name": "Shredded paper" Using Grass Clipping Mulch in the Vegetable Garden. Lawn cuttings Last Updated: November 17, 2020 "name": "Wood chips" Specialty mulches, like mushroom compost, can be expensive. It costs nothing and is a sustainable choice. “Excessive mulch can inhibit moisture and oxygen penetration into the soil, and may produce offensive odors,” warn experts at the University of Minnesota. Cold composting is as simple as collecting yard waste or taking out the organic materials in your trash (such as fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds and filters, and eggshells) and then corralling them in a pile or bin. This practice, which involves spreading a thin layer of material on the top soil of your garden, offers many perks from smothering your weeds, adding nutrients, reducing run-off, and insulating your soil to cutting your water use up to 50 percent. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. Or a now-crushed baby cucumber? That’s why the experts at Michigan State University recommend raking leaves, then running over the leaf mulch pile a few times with your mower. Ideally, you’d mix shredded paper with other compost materials like leaves to have a more diverse organic mulch. Wood mulch is ideal for established gardens and plants, but shouldn’t be used with young plants. Do NOT mix the mulch into the soil. Support wikiHow by Thank you. "supply": [{ “Compost” could include any or all of the other homemade mulch ingredients we’ve mentioned. You can eat last night’s leftovers, but your vegetable acid-loving plants can’t. )

Plant-based mulch includes the benefit of containing nitrogen, the active ingredient in chemical-based, store-bought fertilizer. {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/0\/00\/Make-Mulch-Step-1-Version-3.jpg\/v4-460px-Make-Mulch-Step-1-Version-3.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/0\/00\/Make-Mulch-Step-1-Version-3.jpg\/aid1339818-v4-728px-Make-Mulch-Step-1-Version-3.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":"728","bigHeight":"546","licensing":"