20 Reasons Why You Should Use Mulch In Your Garden

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20 Reasons Why You Should Use Mulch In Your Garden

Are you interested in saving time and money while giving your garden the best chance to succeed? Are you losing too many plants in the heat of summer or the frost of fall? Here’s our “simple” solution that should help you out. Use Mulch!! It’s nature’s best way to protect plants, add nutrients and save on water.

Here’s are 20 reasons why you should use mulch, bark mulch or coloured mulch in your garden.

 

1. Adds organic matter to your soil, which helps make your garden healthier and more resistant to pest and plant disease.

2. Provides valuable slow-release nutrients and prevents vitamin loss in plants which saves you money on fertilizer and ammenders.

3. Helps retain moisture in the soil. Mulch acts as a natural roof and insulation layer to protect the soil from the sun. This helps prevent excessive evaporation of water and helps regulate the soils temperature.  This helps utilize the minimal amount of rain water we get in the summer and helps save with the amount of water we use.

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4. Shades delicate seedlings from too much sun since it acts a natural roof and shade.

5. Reduces time spent watering. More time to tend to other tasks and (this is getting redunant) helps save water!

 

“Mulch can retain up to 70% more water in the soil than unmulched soil.”

Abbotsford-Quote

6. Is a great insulator by regulating soil temperature – keeps roots consistently cool in summer and warm in winter which reduces the amount of plant stress and typically provides for a richer, stronger plant.

7. Provides a natural barrier to help prevent weeds. The interlocking layer of mulch prevents the air born weeds from getting rooted in your gardens soil. If weeds do get a start, mulch makes pulling weeds easy.

8. Increases biological activity in your soil by providing beneficial micro-organisms and earthworms with food. Both of which are great for your plants!

9. Improves soil conditions – helps to bind sandy soils and open up clay soils.

10. Saves you time and energy in prepping and cultivating your soil.

11. Stops nutrients from leaching out of the soil.

12. Protects plants from frost damage by acting as a protective covering. We’ve mentioned this before but we felt the insulating factor of mulch is too important to not mention again.

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13. Provides a clean surface for produce like fruit and nuts to fall, ready for harvesting.

14. Improves soil drainage and structure as it decomposes.

15. Provides support around plants especially young seedlings. You can “pile up” a little mulch around weaker steams giving the young plant the extra help it needs to thrive.

16. Recycles waste materials. This is one of the main principles that we operate from. We LOVE to recycle forest residuals into useful products.

17. Protects plants from heavy rain. The protective interlocking nature of mulch protects and helps bind together the plant structure.

wheel barrow full of mulch

18. Prevents erosion and soil compaction particularly from foot traffic on pathways and play areas.

19. Improves the visual appearance of your garden. Especially if you use a beautiful coloured mulch.

20. Can provide a home for plant-friendly insects.

We love to hear from you so please either share this with your friends or you can email us any questions you might have. We hope you enjoyed our 20 Reasons for Mulch.

Thanks to the Micro Gardener for the some of the ideas we used for this article.

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Rain Water Harvesting

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Rain Water Harvesting

British Columbia rain: too much in the winter, too little in summer

The “leftcoast” gets a lot of rain in the winter, so much it causes problems like flooding, sewer overflows, stream erosion, and polluted runoff into our waterways. But during our summer we get very little rain (less than Tucson, Arizona!).

So it’s hard to store enough water from spring rains to last long for summer irrigation. You need large cisterns or multiple rain-barrel systems to store enough water to have an impact on water usage. Simple practices like amending soil with compost, mulching, and smart watering are the first steps to storing and conserving water. The next step is capturing all that beautiful rain water that falls on our wet coast.

How much rain water can I catch?

The lower mainland of BC averages about 1,200 mm of rain per year, but 2/3 of it falls from November to March. Most areas in the region average less than 87 mm total rainfall for July and August.

The roof of your home is your greatest tool to harvest rainwater. To determine the amount of rain your roof catches, multiply your home’s width by its length (in feet) to estimate its footprint. Then estimate the portion of this area that drains to the downspout you’ll be using to catch your rain.

To calculate the runoff in liters from a metal roof’s 9 meter 10 meter “footprint” (90 square meters) in a climate averaging 304 millimeters of rain a year:

90 square meter roof 304 millimeters of average annual rainfall = 27,360 liters of rain falling on the roof in an average year.

90 m2 304 mm = 27,360 liters/average year

Multiply the above figure by the roof surface’s runoff coefficient 0.95*: 27,360 liters 0.95 = 25,992 liters running off the roof in an average year.

Storing Rain Water

Storing your harvested rainwater can be your greatest challenge. However, most homeowners don’t have room to store the thousands of gallons of collected rainwater that they use in landscape irrigation through our dry summers. Plus the cost of installing storage containers with enough volume to give you water through the entire summer would be very cost prohibitive and it would take a very long time to see the cost savings pay off it off.

Capacity and cost are directly related: decide how much you want to spend on building rainwater storage. Couple with this the practice of using mulches to regulate the soils moisture content and evaporation and you’re on your way to saving money and water throughout our hot summers and help you save water.

 

Vancouver Area Average Monthly Rainfall

Month Jun July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Mar April May June
Rainfall (inches) 11 20 67.8 41.8 112.8 170.8 230.2 167.2 130.4 161.6 24 51

source WeatherStats.ca

Before you launch into a big project like rain water harvesting you can start with a few simple ideas. Begin by building soil with compost and mulching, choosing low-water use plants, and implement Smart Watering practices. Couple these ideas with simple indoor water conservation practices before investing in big rainwater collection systems to help you get on the road to water conservation without having to encounter major water expenses.

Remember, it isn’t rainy season but it does rain. So why not set up your rain harvest system now, while it’s sunny, so you don’t have to do it in the cold wet of our fall. Hope you enjoyed the article if you liked please feel free to share it with your friends!

10 Steps to Stunning Landscape Design

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Your yard is a very important natural resource that adds value to your home and enjoyment to your life. It contributes to a desirable, healthy community. Several important concepts will help you create an aesthetically pleasing, functional, and sustainable design.

The landscape design process includes the consideration of environmental conditions, your desires, and the elements and principles of design. The goal is to organize the natural and man-made features in your yard into an aesthetic, functional, and environmentally sustainable landscape.

The process begins with a site inventory and analysis of soil, drainage, climate conditions, and existing vegetation. This is a critical step for both plant selection and placement and locating family activities and functions. It’s important because the same climate conditions that affect the plants—temperature, humidity, rain, wind, and sunlight—also affect you, the user. The next step is to make a list of your needs and desires—this helps you determine how your yard and landscape will be used. The site and user analyses will also help you establish a theme for the form and style of your design. The functional diagram is then used to locate the activity spaces on the site and from this diagram a conceptual plan is developed. The last step is a final design that includes all the hardscape and planting details that are necessary for installation.

When designing a residential landscape, the most important step is to put a plan on paper. In the article Landscape Design: Ten Important Things to Consider the author provides ten important points to ensure a stunning landscape design. We invite you to give this great resource a read!

Mulch: The Key to Low-Maintenance Landscapes

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Mulch can be one of the gardener’s most valuable tools and an essential component of low-maintenance landscapes. Black Mulch

Earlier this week we posted an article covering frequently asked questions about mulch. If you found it helpful, we’d like to share with you another article that also provides some great information, tips and answers for problem scenarios.

Mulch reduces the amount of water lost through evaporation by shielding the soil from the sun’s drying rays.  It keeps the soil cooler during the summer and acts as an insulator through the cold winter months lessening the effects of fluctuating temperatures on plant roots which in turn decreases their susceptibility to frost heaving.

Did you know that mulch applied too thickly can cause problems? Water may be unable to penetrate the mulch and reach the soil and plants fail to receive adequate moisture. It can also lead to root and stem rot problems in plants.  It’s best to place mulch 2-3″ deep and replace it more frequently than placing it too deep.

For more valuable tips, types and problems read the full mulch article here.