Re: Mulch is Bad!

I never really got the concept of covering every square inch with mulch by commercial contractors who are more about putting things in than growing a garden. In my own garden, the plants really make their own mulch. Under the Fremontodendron for instance the spent flowers, capsules and leaves are heavy enough it keeps out invading weeds (mostly). It's also deep enough that it's spongy underneath. Under the sages they tend to pile up their own mulch as well as the Echium.
 
This article sort of assumes that mulch is *entirely* bad and I think that's my problem with it. With new plants it really does work to conserve moisture once we go into the dry months, but I tend not to religiously apply it, and I actually like seeing bare sand (I did have to do some weeding, but then again I have a garden, not a chunk of unspoiled pristine chaparral. If one visits the chaparral here, there's generally lots of open bare ground with a few herbaceous plants and under each shrub is usually their own self-made piles of mulch.
 
I really don't like the deep bark beds that I see people put in. It seems to be a substitute for adding in plants to cover up all that ground. As my own garden fills in, the need for weeding decreases since the plants shade out most of the weeds (except that insidious kikuyu grass).
 


 
On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Joseph Seals <t*@yahoo.com> wrote:
Overall, it makes a lot of sense.
 
But it starts with a bad assumption.
 
I am a firm believer in mulch.  Yet I teach my hort students that "mulch" is a working concept, not a design concept.
 
That is to say, I recommend mulching as a special covering after planting new plants (and only immediately around the new plants), over a working vegetable garden and upon the ground of a working orchard.  I do not, however, recommend mulching an entire landscape.  There are, indeed, many things wrong with the latter, many as pointed out in the "Au Jardin" article.
 
I teach my landscape design students that on plan, as well as eventually in the actual landscape/garden, the designer must cover every square inch of the plan -- with either hardscape or plants.  The plants for "covering" (along with the basic plants) can be spreading shrubs, trailing or tightly clumping perennials or anything traditionally known as "groundcovers".  The hardscaping can be almost anything creative.  A bag of "mulch" is not part of the design.
 
I'm familiar with the practice of mulching a winter garden from my years in northern Wisconsin.  I never thought much of it.
 
I'm still wondering, though, where and when the practice of mulching an entire California landscape started.  What a maintenance, aesthetic and cultural tragedy.
 
Joe


--- On Tue, 4/5/11, B. Garcia <p*@gmail.com> wrote:

From: B. Garcia <p*@gmail.com>
Subject: Mulch is Bad!
To: "Medit-Plants Plants" <M*@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011, 1:50 PM


I came across this woman's website and after reading a number of rather eye-rollingly pretentious articles, I found this one:about the terrors of mulch:  http://www.frenchgardening.com/aujardin.html?pid=308970042237356 
 
Thoughts?
 
 
 
- Barry


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