yep, it’s virtuous.
Cedar mulch is acidic. It can help convert alkaline water (most city water is) into water much nicer to roses, rhodies, evergreens, and most flowers. I’ve observed that many of the plants that we call weeds actually thrive in city water, and don’t like cedar mulch. Pecan hulls, if you’re in the South.
I spent my morning (because it’s a rare cool day) helping Jane mulch the side of the yard, near the street. The mulch will discourage weeds, protect roots of the junipers and hemlocks, and generally give the place a nice “I meant to do that” look: it also holds water on the plants, and, being insulating, prevents the sun from evaporating water from the soil, and prevents the soil overheating. It also makes any weed that grows through it a little easier to pull, because it prevents the ground compacting into a brick around plant roots.
We moved one big rhody, whose leaves had curled inward, and discovered its roots had never left the original rootball: it was too hot. So we have now applied Wilt-Pruf to its leaves, topside and underside, and hope that we may have saved it by moving it to the cool shade at the corner of the house. Apparently evergreen rhodies, which have a lineage as old as roses and redwoods, have evolved a response to temperature that involves curling the leaves to protect them. So this was a distress signal, but we hope it will recover.
Outside of that, we have cleaned up the pond area, which had gotten a bit cluttered with weeds, and I have shoveled about a yard of mulch. More to do. Much more to do. But we hope the mulch means the side-yard is finished.
Yes, bare soil is anathema to healthy growth, especially where hot sun burns on the ground. If you have oak trees, it’s worth investing in a leaf-shredder. It turns those piles of leaves that collect in drifts into lovely mulch. ( Though I rake the walks and driveway, I never rake the lawn, just run the mower over it to shred the leaves in place.) Almost enough to make you cry to see the dozens of black plastic bags of organic fertilizer raked off the lawns and set out for the trash men. At least in Denton, the yard waste doesn’t go in the landfill. They mix it up with wood chips (from all the trees cut by developers, sigh) and sludge from the waste treatment plant, and tun the huge pile of compost until it’s done, and then sell it back to us. It’s great stuff, actually.
Ruth Stout was pushing mulch 50 years ago. But too many people still think the proper sign of carefully tended garden is bare clean soil. http://www.homestead.org/barbaraBambergerScott/RuthStout/RuthStout%20-TheNo-DigDuchess.htm
They sell back to you the mulch?! In our township (northern Philadelphia, PA, suburbs) they pile up the mulch in a vacant lot across the street from the elementary school — free to all comers. And they make huge piles of it!
well … they sell it cheap … $17 a pickup-load. Trouble is you have to have a pickup, which I no longer have, waaaah!
In a back corner of the extensive grounds of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, they make compost from the manure of the Bronx Zoo across Fordham Road. I discovered it one drizzly afternoon – huge piles of elephant dung, etc., gently steaming in the mist! Probably really good stuff.
You did take a knife to the sides of the rootball. Slashing the looping roots gets them to put out shoots that grow out rather then continuing to go round in circles.
Shredded cedar bark is one of my favorite garden tools. Unlike wood chips it mats and doesn’t float off in heavy rains.
Like the chips though it does tend to lower nitrogen in the soil in the initial stages of decay.
You’re reading minds: I looked the curling-leaves thing up on the internet: we freed the roots somewhat, didn’t have any loopers, but thank you for that. We’re seeing some good response out of it since we moved it. Apparently this species folds and opens its leaves according to the weather, so we hope it will respond and not lose its leaves.
Thanks too for the note about nitrogen: we’ll take that into account.
Yup, my local nursery friend says that a light sprinkling of basic fertilizer over anything that is breaking down (decaying) helps things along without pulling too much nitrogen from the soil. The cheap-o stuff will work fine for that.
#
Another thing that can cause rootbind is failing to modify poor soil when planting a potted plant. The roots are used to the cushy life in potting soil; they hit that nasty stuff and turn right back around instead of pioneering off into the new ground.
And, my rhodies furl their sails in really cold weather, more so than in hot–go figure.
Hey, could you check out your amazon store and update the Kindle link? It is linked to an outdated model or something and will only let you buy used ones from it. My friend is 90% there as far as buying a Kindle in the next few days and I can get him to use your click through. Adding a link to the DX would be handy too. He’s still deciding between the two. *winkwink* *nudgenudge*
Great! Thanks, Sweetbo!
……….uhhhhhhhhhhh, Sweetbo, I have just spent 20 minutes trying to get the site updated. I have written them my 5th letter asking them how in heck we do it this time, since they have changed the rules yet one more time.
Can you just post the direct links here for me to pick up? I think you can go into the product page and at the top area where they have the toolbar for participants you can just grab a link from the item and that will work for a quicky. He just emailed me saying he caved in. He has a special 24-hour waiting period to avoid impulse purchases, but he has asked me for the link anyways. “I’d be happy to help support your favorite biker gang. Or barber shop or whatever it was you said.” lol. He still isn’t settled on DX or K2 though so both would be great.
As I understand it, if he just goes into Amazon via my site, clicks on any of my products, but ends up buying a kindle he searched for, I still get a fee. I’m not sure of this, but Amazon is being particularly slow about this, and I don’t want to delay your friend…I think it’s the best thing we can do quickly. And tell him thank you from me. Thank you, too.
When I navigate to the newest kindle page through the store I lose the ref tags. So I just added it myself. Hope that works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015T963C/ref=nosim?tag=cjcherryh&linkCode=sb1&camp=212353&creative=380549
He is going to add that /ref portion after he starts off through your store in case there is some cookie involved too…cover every base! I used to be a member of the affiliate program myself. Sounds like its gotten really vague over the years. It used to be very simple.
Waahh! I just clicked through to Amazon from your store, saw that Deliverer and Pretender were available for the Kindle, tried to buy them and they’re not available to US customers!!!
I wonder if my brother would set up an Australian account for me? Nah, not worth the hassle.
I apologise in advance but……… this thread should have been called mulch ado about nothing,
try the chicken folks. I’m here all week
🙂
Ouch!
I’m amazed sometimes at how things get planted by professionals.
We had a city landscape crew put in a street tree, never did well
and so it disappeared one day in favor of a couple of replacements.
It had been there for two years, but I was able to pull it like
a weed without digging. I thought that was strange so an examination
showed that they had used an auger and created what looked like the
inside of a ceramic pot, took the tree out of a 5 gallon can and
dropped it into this pot.
Roots don’t push through the ground, they get bigger right where
they are, so new growth will follow the inside of a container used
by nurseries. This creates a situation where the plant roots will
actually choke the poor thing to death over time. Vertical slashing
cuts the circled roots and prevents this.
The ideal planting is a hole at least twice as big as the root ball
or container. Pile up a cone in the center, spread the roots down
the sides of the cone, removing any that would choke if they become
larger. A bit of fertilizer added to the replaced material and a
shot of B12 to cure transplant shock will make you and the plant a
lot happier about the results. If you have extremely hard or compacted
soil don’t be afraid to dig and refill a much bigger hole that makes
the initial root growth much easier for the plant.
Mulch works wonders when plants are just starting out.
NASA has a couple of neat planetary forestation surveys on-line, sad
to see the whole east through center of USA shown bared of trees in
numbers large enough to show a pixel of green.
I heard a newcomer to Vegas say, “if you people hadn’t chopped down all
the trees, this area wouldn’t be a desert now.”
One good indoor or patio plant candidate is the lemon cucumber, fruit
about the size and shape of a tennis ball and it doesn’t cause gas
like some of the others do, I eat them skin and all but they slice
up nicely for salads.
How do you keep mulch in place? I don’t have any sort of edge to my yard, and it slopes to the street, which means that any time it rains, or is really windy, my nice mulch goes floating off. I’ve thought of putting an edging along the sidewalk, but the nursery guy said that will only work until the the edge gets built up by trapped mulch/dirt, and then I will be back to the same situation. And since the sprinklers run close to that edge, I am wary of doing anything that is going to disturb them.
And, of course, mulch makes gophers so much more fun! If they do pop holes in the mulch, it’s a lot harder to fid them because the mulch covers the holes. And if they do real tunnels, you wind up with piles of dirt on top of the mulch, which makes getting it neat and professional-looking again is really a pain.
If you have real gullywashers/tropic rains, it’s a serious problem. But creating an edge does work, particularly if you dish the ground before the edge/barrier. That way any floating mulch hits the edge and settles and you can just take your garden rake and rake it back: just maintain your little trench, which is not too much work, versus seeing your mulch headed for the drains. I’ve also noted that fine mulch stays in place better: it’s part powder, part fine chips that settle fast.
If you have gophers, maybe putting the dogs out on a long leash might help: dunno. It’s one plague I’ve not had to cope with.
Just as an educational piece of info: greyhounds can not be allowed off-leash in an unfenced area, and you can’t tie them out. They can reach speeds greater than 35 mph in a matter of three strides, and tragically bad things happen when they hit the end of a tie-out.
But I did manage to trap one of the gophers today. First time with a macabee trap. And I think that he has a friend in his burrow system, so we will see if I can get that one too.
Once again, I wish there was a way to create a “thread”. So I post here: Book agent Andrew Wylie (representing authors such as Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and John Updike) has just made a publishing deal with Amazon.com, that his authors henceforth would market their books directly as ebooks, bypassing the publishers completely.
I also wish there was a way to either preview or edit a comment. Error on the link. “Wylie’s Amazon deal brings the end of the publishing world nigh”
Wow…I knew it would happen, but I wouldn’t have forecast it quite so soon. I’d be interested to see how he worded his contract, ie, how he gets paid.
Time to call your agent, CJ, and make sure her/his ear is to the ground.
he’s part of a really big company: I have a feeling the echo is still ringing down the halls. But e-rights are something I will have to talk to him about.
Philosopher-ji, I’ve found that cypress mulch tends to stay in place better than bark or chip mulches. You might try a bag and see if that works for your slope.
I tend to not use mulch much any more as I let things reseed indiscriminately and most blank spaces are filled in (and the KC area is full of termites). I do have too much of some plants and have to rip them out, though. I also tend to use the pine needles from a couple trees as mulch in my garden walkways. But with the torrential rains we’ve had this year it’s breaking down and floating to one end of the path regularly. I may need to actually purchase mulch for the first time in years.
When I had my little pickup, I ran around during the fall and winter and scooped up the huge piles of black bags other people put out for the trash. I even had a few choice addresses where the owners had a shredder and shredded the leaves to need fewer bags. Why, after putting that work in, they didn’t use the mulch on their own property, I cannot comprehend
It was quite a shock when I got my little sedan after having the pickup (not at all a giant, a tiny Mazda) to find that I could put just ONE or, at a pinch and not closing the lid, two bags in the trunk.
lol: you need a roofrack: I’ve seen amazing things in Europe, where they have mini cars but BIG roofracks! A Fiat 150 laboring under a fullsized sofa…
When I was still growing mums as a business we used a layer of newspaper (check the ink make-up), covered with straw. The straw *seemed* to help the paper break down faster; the straw itself has very few seeds. Once packed down it did not move, even on our fifteen ft. high decorative mound. Also I have found that any mulch once established doesn’t move much.
OFF SUBJECT: We have begun to fill the fish pond! 🙂 🙂 😆
Hurrah for the fish pond! Good luck! If you’re getting koi, feed them up—give them whatever they want: they have a couple of months to grow before winter. Hikari Gold is good high protein food. Remember to switch to wheat food only once the temperature is consistently in the 60’s. They need to go to sleep on quickly-emptying tummeis.
Cocoa-hulls (or is it husks? not coconut, but chocolate) make a nice mulch: when you spread it the whole garden smells of chocolate. If you water it a little, just a sprinkling right after spreading, the little shells stick together a bit into a kind of blanket for the soil. Even after they dry again they don’t blow away.
I have to admit, my garden is flat, there can be a lot of rain but it generally isn’t really torrential, and we don’t often get real hurricanes around here; so I have no idea how it’ll perform under those conditions.
The plants can easily grow through it, and it doesn’t deter the root-propagating weeds like ground elder. The seed-propagating weeds are less numerous and are easy to pull up, though things like the columbines can still self-seed and grow quite freely.
It’s also supposed to deter the neighbours’ cats and dogs from using my garden as their loo: it helps a bit, but not completely, and only for the first few months.
I spread a little compost underneath it, and in about a year the bottom half of the mulch turns itself into more compost, both soil improver and plantfood.
It costs a bit more than pine-bark mulch (the usual choice around here), but it’s a lot better for the soil and saves a bit on the compost I’d otherwise want to buy.
By applying this once a year for 15 years, my solid clay garden has developed a good layer of nice dark topsoil that’s much nicer to work and much better for the plants.
And it’s much better environmentally than the third choice we usually get here, which is peat. That’s made of ages-old bogs in paces like Ireland, which are irreplacable on our timescale: ever since I learned that I’ve wondered at gardeners, who I’d expect to be people who like nature, allowing thousand-year-old landscapes to be irretrevably destroyed as mulch for their roses. And that while shredded coconut-husks, which are thrown away as garbage in the poor coconut-producing countries, can work just as well!
I’ve come to see it as a downside to all this globalisation: year-round oranges are nice, but nobody knows where most of the things they buy have come from, or how they’ve been produced, and so nobody protests about the cheap-but-damaging production-methods, and nobody invests in better ways or alternatives.
Nobody can invest the time to find out what the consequences are for every product they use, but even for simple everyday things like mulch and cellphones they can be appalling. Buying locally when you can is a good idea, but for a lot of things it isn’t possible, and I hate the idea of unknowingly fueling a civil war in Africa by buying a new cellphone!
The cocoa mulch smells wonderful! Only caution I’ve heard about is if you have dogs – they may eat the mulch, and the caffeine in the cocoa is bad for them.
It’s not the caffeine, it’s the chocolate itself. Their systems register it as a poison, same with cats. But then, we used to give our dogs M&Ms all the time, 3 at a time, once a day, the vet said it wasn’t going to hurt them. Kind of like taking a drink of alcoholic beverage.