For the first 2 years I lived here, the leaves would be gathered and mounded along side the road for the county to pick up. They use big trucks with an automatic vacuum system that sucks the leaves into a giant holding tank.
One day, a lady stopped in while I was dumping the leaves by the road. She asked if she could bag some of them up. I said sure, they are just gonna sit here until the county comes to get them. She parked her car, pulled out a few garbage bags, and had at it. It never dawned on me to ask why she wanted all my leaves. So the next time she came, I asked "what do you use all these leaves for?" "I use them in my garden" she said. At the time, it didn't make much sense to me. This was before I started gardening.
So once I started gardening, I realized how lucky I was to have all this free mulch sitting around every fall. I never saw that lady again, I wonder if she was sad to see her free mulch disappear.
So, tis the season once again, actually, its over now. But anyway, now every year I have giant mounds of leaves in my back yard, waiting to be spread out over the garden like a warm blanket.
Some benefits to mulching the garden. A two to four inch layer of mulch will help with moisture loss not only in the winter, but help enormously in the heat of the growing season. It slows down evaporation from the soil, and also helps to keep plant roots cooler. On the flip side, if you are planting your garlic in the fall, it keeps the cloves you just planted from freezing. Mulches also soak up rain that would otherwise be run off on an un-mulched garden. Another great benefit to using leaves, they add humus to the soil as they break down, which in turn helps the soil to retain moisture. Not to mention all the great beneficial fungi that break down organic mulches are great for the garden as well.
So what if you don't have leaves? You could also use things like alfalfa, straw, hay, wood shavings, shredded bark, shredded corncobs and stalks, dry grass as long as it hasn't been sprayed with any toxic gick. Or, go find some leaves, people just give this stuff away, I did at one time.
So when it comes time to plant in the spring, just pull back the mulch where you want to plant. When your sprouts come up, pull a little mulch back around the seedlings. For transplants, same deal, pull the mulch back, dig your hole and throw the plant in there and pull the mulch back around. Yes its that simple folks! If you have gardened before without using mulch, you will be amazed how much less you will be watering, if at all. I know from experience, my first year I did not mulch. My nice dark rich soil turned light and grayish in the heat of the summer. And I had to water quite often. This year I watered a little to establish some transplants, and after that I said, your on your own plants! Everything flourished, and I had some of the best tasting tomatoes ever. So mulch your gardens!!
Here is a picture of one of my key hole gardens with a fresh mulch of leaves.
I was that leaf-steal-er over the summer when I was trying to build my compost pile. A neighbor down the road dumps all his leaves on the opposite side of the road. Needless to say, I was down there with a few black trash bags twice in one week. They never said anything, and I've often wondered if they thought I was a nut.
ReplyDeleteThat compost was a part of my sheet mulching a few weeks ago. FREE compost. FREE mulch. Let's hope I didn't over-carbonize. hehe
You can't beat free! I wouldn't worry about too much carbon when mulching. Only if you were composting them. Nature will break it down over time. It happens every year in the forest!
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