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Mulch and Feed your Gardens
for Free
By The Bare
Bones Gardener
In Today's throwaway society,
there is absolutely no need to go out and purchase mulch material for your
garden, unless it is for the particular aesthetic appearance, "The
Look", sake of the mulch material.
Were you aware that there are a number of mulching materials that you can
obtain from around your own community that are free, and some of which can
even be even delivered to you for nothing as well.
Impossible you might say. Well I mulch my gardens fairly heavily, and I never
pay a cent for the mulch material. As a matter of fact, most of the mulch is
willingly delivered to my home for nothing. As the former owners are only too
glad to see the back of it, as it would cost them money, time and effort to
find other ways of getting rid of it.
I also combine these outside sources of mulch with my own compost, weeds and
other organic matter mixed through to achieve a great result in my garden,
and so all that it costs me is time and effort.
So what am I talking about? While some of the below list is delivered free,
other items I pick up myself, depending on time, circumstances, importance
etc.
Grass Clippings from other people in the area or from lawn-mowing
contractors.
Wood shavings from local wood turners and
carvers, (Do not use shavings from treated timber).
Small amounts of solid fill from friends who are excavating. This is to
assist in raising garden beds, in my heavy clay soil.
Light prunings from shrubs
which is shredded by me or put whole into garden
Heavier sticks and logs, which are turned into trellis, garden stakes, garden edges, seats, frames, log planters etc. while they slowly decay.
Newspaper, cardboard, non-rubber carpet underlay, and even carpet and carpet
squares. Which is put under other mulch to prevent grass and weed re-growth
Animal manures sometimes mixed with straw from places like Racetracks and
Showgrounds, Pony Clubs, Stables etc. I contact them well beforehand to see
if any is available.
To this I also add my own weeds, throwing away some which can still be a
potential problem, or burying them below the bottom most layer of mulch
material to stop them re-growing.
Another item I add is any old potting mix from deceased plants or when re-potting
plants.
Being a fairly lazy gardener, I throw the material around a bit at a time, as
they are available, and let nature mix them for me. On a couple of occasions
I have received a bit too much wood shavings so these became path material
between some of the garden beds, with a heavy underlay of newspapers. People
even tell me that it looks and feels good underfoot.
Never put a large amount of fresh animal manure on any garden, as it will
burn any plant around it. Be extremely sparing or let it age first for a few
months before applying it to the garden.
I have been living in my new house for about fifteen months, and the mulch
layer in all my gardens (there were no gardens originally), is about 10 cm or
4 inches deep. None of which I have paid for and little that I have had to
even pick up for myself.
People are even starting to comment on how fast the plants in my gardens are
growing in the local heavy black clay soils, and they are surprised when I
tell them that I have never bothered to fertilise the plants. The reason for
this is that the earliest laid mulch material, is now broken down into plant
nutrients and is now feeding my plants as a plant nutrient soup aided by the
soil life which has suddenly started appearing in my gardens.
Another benefit that has started to appear in the last few months is the
arrival of insect eating wildlife into my garden. Predatory insects and birds
are now visiting my gardens on a regular basis, where I saw none this time
last year. Bees and butterflies are also starting to visit many of the
plants, which have come into flower
for the first time this year.
So what can you do to start locating your own supplies of free mulch
material, well here are a number of suggestions.
Put a little sign near your gate, something along the lines of ‘Organic mulch
required', or ‘Lawn clipping wanted'. There are sure to be a number of local
people who are currently throwing theirs away in your community or even local
area. Never mulch solely with grass clippings as they form an impenetrable
layer that air and water cannot get through. Always mix it with other things
to stop it ‘thatching', just like a roof over the soil.
See if you can get into contact with local people who are into woodturning
and carving, or even local sawmills. And come to some arrangement about
unpreserved wood shavings.
Check the local phonebook for local showgrounds/racetracks/stables etc, to
find out if any have stable or manure waste to give away, for people willing
to pick them up
In other words, start talking around the place that you are after mulch
materials and they will soon start coming to you.
The only caution with using other peoples’ waste material is the chance that
you might also import other peoples’ pests and weeds. I have rarely found it
a problem because of heavy mulch on mulch routines. But it is possible.
One point being that when you first start applying mulch to your garden you
may see some nitrogen deficiencies occur in some plants. This is because the
organisms that are breaking down the mulch material are using up all the
available resources of it during the initial breakdown. Once you have gotten
past this time the old composted material provide more than enough nitrogen
for future processes.
Another thing to be careful of is not to bury or mulch up against the stems
of wanted plants, as it may cause further problems for your plants in rot
problems around the collar of the stems.
So get out there and talk around the community, find the contacts, believe it
or not they will be as grateful as you to solve their particular problems of
waste reduction. As well as that, you may start making some new friendships
out of the deal; I know I have.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright by The Bare Bones Gardener
The
Bare Bones Gardener is
a qualified Horticulturist and a qualified Disability Services Worker. He
hates spending money on stuff that doesn’t live up to the promises given. So
he looks for cheaper, easier, simpler or free ways of doing the same thing and
then he passes these ideas on to others.
Garden
Blog - http://barebonesgardening.blogspot.com/
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