Although mulching is perhaps the slowest method of cold composting, it offers many benefits. It discourages weeds, protects soil from compacting or eroding, and keeps the roots of plants cool and moist in hot weather and insulated in the winter.

Mulching copies nature’s way of composting on the surface of the soil and gardeners have been doing it for centuries.

Woody, “brown” organic materials are spread in a layer on the ground, over a garden, or around shrubs and trees. Because they are not dug into the soil but decompose on the surface, they don’t disturb the pH balance of the soil or rob it of nitrogen.

Many different products can be used for mulching. My favorite was cedar mulch. It can be used in any flower garden, and a layer of 3 or 4 inches can keep the soil fairly moist even in hot summer weather; in addition, there was very little, if any, weeding to be done where I had spread the mulch.

The best part of having cedar mulch was that it kept the cats away from my flower garden. It seems that cats don’t like the cedar mulch and that suited me must fine.

Another mulch was the cocoa bean shells. It decomposed a lot faster than the cedar mulch, but it gave off a beautiful aroma when it rained.

Now that I am in an apartment and do container gardening on my balcony, I am trying out something different. Last fall I did not cut back my climatis nor did I empty my hanging flower pots.

Although I live on the fourth floor and in spite of the extremely cold winter, I was able to save one rose bush growing in a half barrel container, a climatis and carpet rose in another big rectangular deck box, and lilies in another half barrel by mulching heavily with soil.

This spring, when I cut back my climatis, I took the long stems, cut them up in small pieces, and spread that as mulch in my rectangular container. I did the same with the dead annuals. I cut up the long daggling dead plants into small pieces, and I even took the soil containing the dead roots, broke these root balls into pieces, and spread the pieces as mulch around the perimeter of my containers. These will probably take time to break down so will help keep the soil moist and cool.

Then I went bought a few dozen worms at the bait and tackle store and dumped these into my big containers. Last summer I lost my worms and wondered whether the birds had eaten them. This past winter when I was doing a small amount of worm composting, I discovered that they hate soil with synthetic fertilizer in it. I think the RX15 etc. had burned them.

Now that I have a new batch of worms, I am hoping they will feed on the compost material or even kitchen scraps I will give them on a regular basis. Another option for worm food will be clumps of wet shredded newspaper mixed in with the soil. Hopefully these worms will survive and provide all the fertilizer I need for my main plants in those big containers.

Time will tell!

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Share This  |  Email It  |  Print It  |  Subscribe to It!
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 10:57 pm and is filed under mulching, Cold Composting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.