Gar­den Stake Light

Mulch and Feed your Gar­dens for Free

Author: 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 regrowth

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 regrowing.

Another item I add is any old pot­ting mix from deceased plants or when repot­ting 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.

About the Author:

The Bare Bones Gar­dener is a qual­i­fied Hor­ti­cul­tur­ist and a qual­i­fied Dis­abil­ity Ser­vices Worker. He hates spend­ing money on stuff which 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/

Arti­cle Source: ArticlesBase.com — Mulch and Feed your Gar­dens for Free