Tip # 9: Mulch

Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of a series of articles on low cost gardening. See Tip#1 on Planning; Tip #2 on Soil; Tip # 3 on Compost; Tip # 4 Tools; Tip # 5 Containers; Tip #6 Seeds; Tip #7 Pollinators; Tip #8 Other Amendments.

Jane Mack

Humans are resourceful and known as innovators. Gardening is an activity that provides opportunities to use a variety of tools, choose among options, address changing situations, and engage our creative spirit. Gardening is fun!

If you aren’t careful, gardening can deplete your pocket money very fast.. If you’ve got the budget, you can afford the time-saving products and devices within your means. If you don’t have the budget, don’t give up! There are a lot of ways to garden with very low or no expenditure of funds.

A lot of what I’m sharing here is information I’ve gleaned from obsessive watching of You-Tube videos, reading lots of articles and plant studies, and my own successes and failures. I am not an expert gardener — far from it! Just sharing what I’ve learned.

Here’s hoping these tips help.

Tip #9: Mulch

Many websites recommend using mulch. Mulch is organic material that is not yet broken down. It is used on the surface of the soil, not worked into it. Mulch acts to protect soil from sun damage. It also helps to retain moisture in the soil. It prevents dirt splashing up on the leaves and introducing diseases. Mulch also helps protect against soil erosion.

• Video: JoegardenerTV channel: “7 Big Benefits of Using Mulch” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298N5mloMr8

You can buy mulch at the gardening center.

Cheap and easy. You can make your own mulch. I have two basic sources in my yard for mulch that I use frequently. One is the dead part of the banana plants. Not the blossom, which goes into the compost or fertilizer, if not otherwise used for cooking. But I use the leaves and stalks, especially after I’ve cut down the ripened bananas.

Another source in my yard is the leaves from the Pink Tacoma tree. I have a few trees and they drop leaves at a staggering rate! They are full of leaves all the time, but there are always leaves on the ground.

You can also use grass clippings or tree, bush, and plant branches for mulch.

There are two parts to the processing of mulch. The first is to make sure your mulch is in relatively small pieces. In my situation, my leaves are small; but if you have larger leaves you can run over them with a lawn mower or otherwise crush them up. For the banana plant mulch, I use my trusty scissors and cut up the plant leaves and stalks into small pieces. If you’re mulching tree branches, you need a wood chipper, which you can rent or buy.

The second part of the processing of mulch is to make sure that it doesn’t contain anything bad like harmful fungus, harmful bacteria, weed seeds, or plant pests. I suppose you can feel confident about your plants and do nothing more. Or you can take additional precautions. I’ve read different things about what is needed for this stage, but the overarching position is that a combination of heat and time is needed to kill off and sanitize the mulch. Generally, yard debris (leaves, grass clippings, banana stalks, etc.) needs to reach at least 165° F internal temperature at any given time, or be exposed to sustained temperatures over several weeks of at least 135° F to make sure all the nasty things are dead.

I personally use tin foil roasting pans and bake my leaf or banana leaf mulch in the oven! My lowest oven setting is 200° F, so I bake it at that or even at 250° F for at least a half hour. If the leaves have any moisture when they go into the oven, I bake them for an hour. They come out dry and, after they cool, I store them in a lawn & leaf bag. And I use them as mulch!

I decided to try to the second method with lawn clippings, to see if that would work for mulch, also. I have bags of the lawn clippings sitting outside now, but of course it’s been raining. I left them sit in the sun for three months! In our tropical climate, I expected this to work. Instead, with all the rain, and some random boonie animals tearing into the plastic, I ended up with something more akin to leaf mold or compost, with lots of worms. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!  Because they lost their mulch texture, I’m just going to use them in the compost bin.

But you can try this in dry season, and probably end up with mulch!

If you want other ideas for using your grass clippings, there are plenty of ideas. Just don’t use grass clippings that had chemicals applied to them.

• Video: Huw Richards channel, GRASS –The Most Valuable FREE Resource for Growing Food.

Other sources: Some communities have free mulch available through municipal government projects and local enterprises. We have an active and growing gardening community in the CNMI, and perhaps we’ll get something like this, too.

• Video: Epic Gardening channel, 7 Cheap (or Free) Mulch Sources and How to Use Them in Your Garden

When you spread the mulch, you want to be sure to make thick layers, on top of the soil. You can use mulch on your pathways between raised garden beds, as well as on the beds themselves, to help keep down the weeds. I plan on using more mulch for erosion control on the sloped hillside.

Note that some people like to use mulch for decorative purposes. You may see mulch in stores that is bark in various colors (dyed!), or stones or even rubber. These aesthetic mulches aren’t the same as mulch used to protect your soil. They may have some benefits, but before you use them in your garden, understand what you’re working with. Do your homework. Always check back to your planning, tip #1!

Good luck and happy gardening.