Mulching...

[bazzaboy]

In a recent discussion on another thread VVG suggested that "mulching cuts weeding". That's a good tip but I'm never quite sure which mulching material to use for which crop so thought I would ask for suggestions.

What mulch do you use for
a) onions, shallots, leeks ?
b) roots such as parsnips, carrots, beetroot?
c) brassicas and greens?

[chris]

I know some people use straw, whilst others use grass clippings and wet newspaper (TS is a big advocate of these).

[Two_Sheds]

I use whatever is to hand. As Chris says, for me that means wet newspapers weighted down with soil or grass clippings, around squash, spuds & fruit.

I use grass clippings alone on my onion beds (because I couldn't get newspaper among them).

My carrots seemed to mulch themselves this year with chickweed, loads of it

[VirginVegGrower]

I have used my spent compost from previous years BB. Or my own churned chickeny poo compost. Prior to having the hens I couldn't generate enough compost, quickly enough...not something I struggle with now. Rotted muck has been another top cover I've used but beware your source and Aminopyralid (hope I have spelt that correctly, from memory). My mother always used mushroom compost on her allotment and although I've never bought it in, she had fantastic loam.
Cardboard is another top cover too. We've used bike boxes, scrounged from Halfords...very accommodating chaps there.
Good luck with sourcing some

[lottie dolly]

grass mowings,we got a big law,and can ask neighbours to,also lottie weeds,but not those with seed heads on,just hoe up the weeds,and push around the plants,but not the stem,

[bazzaboy]

Good ideas, thank you. But some questions.... My own compost is no good for this coz clearly imperfect and tends to INCREASE weeds! Similarly local sourced stable manure where deep littering inevitably ends up with viable hay seeds. So both have their uses but not for mulching.

A question on newspaper and cardboard - do you use it in layers then, not shredded? So how do you put sheets of cardboard around an individual carrot or parsnip? Or do you put holes in the cardboard and sow a seed through the hole? And doesn't a layer of damp paper or card provide a holiday home for slugs?

Grass cuttings easier to apply (and I do use them for potatoes on the assumption it increases acidity and discourages scab), though not sure what it does to the soil. Never see mushroom compost on offer these days... and tended to be expensive. Maybe I should get a chicken - lol, poor loner, - two then...? do they produce a lot? And it doesn't burn the veg?

[bazzaboy]

Two_Sheds' recently recommended (on a different thread) permaculture book "Gaia's Garden" arrived today - a good read - and suggests mulching for moisture retention using all the standard materials such as straw, wood shavings, bark, leaves, shredded stalks, seaweed and even sand.... plus sawdust and pine-needles for acid-loving plants. And one other material that might be more of a surprise - stones and rocks. Author Toby Hemenway claims that stones and rocks, as well as helping to retain moisture in the usual manner of mulching may also cause condensation from warmer damper air and thereby actually drip water into the ground even on a dry day! Fascinating!

Another point made by Hemenway is that to be effective mulch should be two-to-four inches (5-10 cms) thick..... which is way deeper than I ever do it, p'raps that's where I'm going wrong.

Interesting book on many topics, thanks to Two_Sheds for the recommendation.

LATER: p.s. A permaculture booklet by R & J Mars agrees with the drip feed of stone/rock mulch but suggests the dampness is less likely to be from warmer damper air and more likely to be condensation of evaporation from below - which is perhaps more convincing... Where the one suggests that there is additional moisture and the other re-cycled moisture both agree that roots will benefit from moisture that they wouldn't otherwise be receiving.

[Two_Sheds]

A question on newspaper and cardboard - do you use it in layers then, not shredded?

Not too thick a layer, because it tends to just sit there, not rotting. I use one broadsheet layer (so that's about 20 sheets?), wetted and laid out in a mat, papier mache style. Don't over-complicate things

Two_Sheds' recently recommended (on a different thread) permaculture book "Gaia's Garden" .

I'm glad you liked it ~ I love books that come at things from a different angle

[Aberdeenplotter]

I mulch none of them. I'm a great believer in keeping the weeds down with the use of elbow power and my hoe. That way the soil gets a chance to stay at least relatively dry and discourages slugs and snails and other beasties that might want to have a munch on my growing crops.

[Snadger]

I mulch everything..............including the paths!

The paths have just had a woodchipping mulch on top of the weeds. Weeds need light to flourish, some may venture above the mulch.................but any that do will just be covered with mulch again.
My own compost weed seeds and all goes on beds.............I don't look upon them as weeds though, just green manure which adds organic matter to the soil.

I also use straw quite a lot and uncomposted chicken manure goes straight on the beds.

I prefer organic mulches to inorganic as at least they add nutrients to the soil and create humus.
After mulching for years and years you just don't need to dig anymore.You can plant stuff with your hand instead of a trowel as the soil is so friable.

Ruth Stout is the Queen of mulch as far as I am concerned. Her reply to every question was "Add more mulch"

Ruth Stout' s System

[bazzaboy]

i mulch none of them.

i mulch everything....

"Subscribers to Grapevine are guaranteed a range of advice. . .!"

Thank you each and all.

[Two_Sheds]

I'm a great believer in keeping the weeds down with the use of elbow power and my hoe.

Each to his own, but I think that's a typical "male" approach: annihilate everything ! The chap next to me is up there dawn till teatime, hoeing and hoeing. He waits for a weed to appear, then "attack!".

It depends what you want to spend your time doing.

I'm up there once or twice a week maybe. I view weeds as Snadger does: useful until they start to flower, and then they come out and add goodness to the compost heap.
My plot looks green all year round, not a brown desert. I don't like areas of bare soil, and neither does nature: if a crop or a mulch isn't there, she'll make darn sure that some weeds will fill the gap.

[bazzaboy]

I think that's a typical "male" approach....
I don't like areas of bare soil, and neither does nature: if a crop or a mulch isn't there, she'll make darn sure that some weeds will fill the gap.

oh oh, so is filling every space with weeds typically female?

Although I am fast becoming a mulch convert (and whereas Snadger's Ruth Stout recommends 8 inches, 2S's recommended Hemenway - who we should now perhaps rename He Men Way - recommends a minimum of 12 inches!) I still do really really like bare soil. I think it's beautiful, the colours, the textures, changes with weather and time of day. A freshly ploughed field (or dug lottie patch) is every bit as visually stunning as one filled with Van Gogh flowering rape seed (and a mite more subtle). And bare soil is so inviting.... now what can I stick in there?

But 8-12 inches of mulch...? Bring it on! Raised beds rule!

[bazzaboy]

I mulch none of them. I'm a great believer in keeping the weeds down with the use of elbow power and my hoe. That way the soil gets a chance to stay at least relatively dry and discourages slugs and snails and other beasties that might want to have a munch on my growing crops.

Each to his own, but I think that's a typical "male" approach: annihilate everything ! The chap next to me is up there dawn till teatime, hoeing and hoeing. He waits for a weed to appear, then "attack!"

Interesting......

Without furthering the gender fun and games I think it may be useful to investigate further the “slug problem” that can result from mulching if for no other reason so that it can be countered. Hemenway openly admits “sheet mulching” (which is his version of deep mulching with prescribed layers of card, compost, manure, straw etc) has two problems (well three if you count the problem of assembling sufficient quantities of different materials for sheet mulching), which basically are:
a) furthering the spread of weeds (particularly bind weed and rhizome grasses) and
b) the increased onset of slugs.

Even as I type it out I can hear Aberdeen Plotter saying “Told you so!” Of slugs Hemenway writes:
“Another drawback to sheet mulch is slugs. In the early phase of decomposition, slug population can explode.” (p.90).

You can hardly expect a permaculture expert such as Hemenway to start advocating liberal dusting with blue pellets…. and he doesn’t (I might not be such a purist in the early stages) but I have to say I don’t find his solutions to this problem at all convincing. His first suggestion is to sow more of succulent green crops such as lettuce to effectively share with the slugs – “the slugs do the thinning” is his claim, I don’t think the slugs will quite see it that way and even if you shout at them that they are only to eat every other lettuce I’m not sure they’ll obey your directive.

His second suggestion is equally impractical if cropping is on any scale (might just work for Square Foot Gardening), which is to grow each separate plant in a recycled tin (both ends removed, cut into hoops as necessary) as slugs will be “irritated by the galvanic shock they receive from the metal coating”. If planting any quantity of different crops even in a veg patch or allotment this technique seems to come from ditsy land and I’d be borrowing AP’s hoe! And he doesn’t state how it works with crops like potatoes… - e.g. do you play hoopla with the emerging shoots while the slugs are busy burrowing into the spuds under the surface?

The AP and 2S's neighbour's approaches are perhaps closest to efficient modern farming practice… If you inspect closely most commercial field crops you will find that, miraculously, the crop grows for the most part on bare soil without any weeds (or mulch)…. Well that’s clever! They’ve been sprayed of course, and not so much with a simple weedkiller but a “pre-emergence” or “pre-germination” spray that prevents all but the desired crop from getting started. But those inhibitor sprays are not available to the rest of us but have to be replaced (somewhat inaccurately) by hoeing. Similarly I always notice if I have half a dozen cabbages on the allotment I get hundreds of visiting cabbage whites whereas when I go to East Anglia I drive through miles and miles of brassicas in south Lincs and north Norfolk and never see one cabbage white! Clever stuff these chemicals!

So as always there’s a balance to be explored… the advantages of mulching versus the disadvantages of mulching. The aim is always to increase the former, reduce the latter… which are you going to do?

[Two_Sheds]

oh oh, so is filling every space with weeds typically female?

I think finding a different way is a female thing (lateral thinking), if we still have our tongues firmly in our cheeks

bare soil is so inviting.... now what can I stick in there?

So it's not bare for long, is it? Ideally, get a crop in it. If not, mulch it

the “slug problem” that can result from mulching

I get slugs up the lotty. I don't get all that many under the mulches though (they don't like crawling across grass clippings, for one thing).

I have various slug traps up the plot: after many years of experimenting, I find a sheet of cardboard or a paving stone to the best hotel. They congregate under there daytimes, and I scoop them all up and throw them to the chickens.

Snails are a little more cunning: they tend to hide under the lip on my Morrisons buckets, so I also have a feel under there for them. They get crushed and left on the path for the blackbirds.

I have a greater slug problem at home, where I don't mulch. I do plant closely, and the slugs are able to live amongst the foliage quite happily. I go out at night with a torch and a bucket of salty water and dispatch them - great sport.

They don't do a lot of damage, really, however I do lose my hostas to them: I've tried a coffee ground mulch, that doesn't work. I just accept that I can't grow hostas in the ground, I have to have them in containers where I can protect them better.