Re: Mulch is Bad!

I agree that mulch is not the panacea that it is often touted to be. But it does have its uses. I garden on very heavy alluvial clay that has been abused and badly treated long before my arrival. Organic mulch has been a great boon to stabilizing this soil's life and balance. Most urban gardens in the areas I've dealt with are somewhat similar.

I have often encourages those who purchase newly built homes (or those that have had extensive renovation by contractors) to mulch heavily as soon as possible - even if they are not planning to get to the garden for a while. The mulch helps create a natural stratification in the disturbed soil structure, introduce micro-organisms, balance fertility, etc. I heard of many occasions when soil is tested and shown to contain metals and other questionable substances, promising to cost big bucks for remediation. Inevitably put on the back burner (due to cost), heavy organic mulching often performs the remediation in the meantime.

In these cases I seldom suggest purchasing bagged products sold at great cost. Using whatever organic material is easily (and cheaply) had locally is the best route - from local leaves and lawn clipping, tree company chippings, to other bio-refuse from local agriculture or green industry.

The recent fad in dyed mulch (jet black and rust-orange colors available!) is appalling. And those who fancy products that decompose only VERY SLOWLY miss the point entirely (these are also the most likely to shed water, leaving the soil beneath without moisture to 'retain').

Several have recently encouraged mineral mulches (gravel, decomposed granite, etc.) which is useful for plants that prefer perfect drainage around their crowns or are native to stony, scree soils. Many soils around the Mediterranean seem to be of this type. In fact, most soils of that region that I've been able to inspect up close are remarkably stony, poor, and perfectly drained, especially compared with California (which tends to have richer, heavier soils). I also question how 'green' it is to use quarried rock/gravel from distant locations (sometimes other countries).

I've always wished I'd brought one of those collapsible shovels with me when traveling abroad, so I could dig the soil on a whim to really understand it better. Many generalizations made by garden authorities stem from whatever soil types most commonly encountered by the author.

In stable environments, weeds tend to be less of a problem, and soil left bare remains just that - bare. In my own situation, on rich clay that retains moisture well (until it finally dries out), with a equally rich weed seed load, unwanted sprouting species can overwhelm in a matter of days (hours?!) even the most vigorous intended garden subjects. As stated, mature landscapes create their own mulching and overshadow and out produce many weedy types. This is the goal in creating a landscape 'system', for it truly is a living system that ultimately must find its own balance and equilibrium.
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SeÃn O.
http://about.me/seanaohara


On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:29 PM, B. Garcia <p*@gmail.com> wrote:
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.
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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.
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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).
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On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Joseph Seals <t*@yahoo.com> wrote:
Overall, it makes a lot of sense.
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But it starts with a bad assumption.
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I am a firm believer in mulch. Yet I teach my hort students that "mulch" is a working concept, not a design concept.
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That is to say, I recommend mulching as a special covering after planting new plants (and only immediatelyÂaround 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.
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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.
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I'm familiar with the practice of mulching a winter garden from my years in northern Wisconsin. I never thought much of it.
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I'm still wondering, though, where and when the practice of mulching an entireÂCalifornia landscape started. What a maintenance, aestheticÂand culturalÂtragedy.
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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: Âhttp://www.frenchgardening.com/aujardin.html?pid=308970042237356Â
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Thoughts?
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- Barry

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