Yardening 6- Feb 2014- Snow SNow go away!

Speedie, We don't really have a farm just an acre of land and some borrowed from a neighbor that didn't use his. We only have the chickies now but years ago we had goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, horses and once a cow. The more invested in horses we got the fewer other animals we kept. It was a lot of fun and great for the children. Oh don't want to forget the house pests, dogs, cats, ferrets, chinchillas and the several fish tanks (one filled with tadpoles).

I'm not so sure about the manure smells either, but I've always loved the smell of fresh mulch.

Fresh mulch is the best!!!

speedie---

Another thing we have in common----

I too love the smell of horse manure,,,not others that I can recall--
My other favorite smell is fresh-mowed grass....

I have not been near a farm in forever and a day....G.

A lawn company aerates my yard in the fall and then spreads compost with a high manure content on top. One year, the manure wasn't ripe or dry enough and my entire court smelled like a barnyard. My neighbor said it was the scent of his childhood on a farm.

l like horse manure when I go get it for the garden. Actually, it's mostly sawdust with manure and urine. Cow can be a lot stinkier. Pigs, forget it!

Some of the mulch they spread on commercial plantings absolutely REEKS

Around here, virtually all commercial plantings get covered in way too much shredded hardwood mulch. It doesn't smell, but it's terrible for the plants because of how much they pile on. If only the plants could be so lucky as to get smelly mulch instead : )

Pig manure is terrible! Some of the amish use that around here...yuck!

Muddy, how much mulch are you talking about? I usually like to spread a solid 2-3"....is that too much?

I'm talking about 8+ inch mulch volcanoes....the kind that contribute to the early demise of way too many trees and the 5+ inch mounds piled elsewhere. Not much water makes it through that thick a layer of shredded hardwood because it mats together and repels water.

I have heard that putting just 12" of mulch around a mature tree will, eventually,
kill it. It seems to deprive the feeder roots of Oxygen. Is this correct?

Also--mo matter what you mulch--the mulch should be kept away from the base/stem of
the plant. Mulch can have a lot of Fungus and bacteria in it.
On trees--keep it away from the stem/trunk a foot--all around.
G.

The Amish around here use both horse and cow manure. MmmmmmmMAN it smells nice!! Gita, around the end of the first week in April or so, you really should come down here to visit me; we can go visit all the Amish farms, and soak in that wonderful freshly-manured smell!!
Oh, and yes, you are right, over-mulching a mature tree in that way, in time, WILL kill it. Between promoting crown rot and depriving the roots of oxygen, it's a lose-lose situation for the poor tree.

Muddy, I wonder who's over-mulching all those commercial areas like that? Not a good practice, shows laziness. I'm sure they do it for weed-prevention; they don't want to have to go back and weed those beds, easier to just pile mulch up to high to prevent ANYTHING good from getting down into the soil. DUH.

To be honest, I prefer plain ol' hardwood mulch, it's my favourite, but I don't use it that thick! Only about 2" or so, and it gets raked-over and fluffed up once or twice per season.

Oh I see what you mean. Gita, you are correct, mulch volcanoes will kill trees. That is what happened to the Norway Maple in my front yard when we first moved in.

The culprits are those large commercial companies like Brickman. They hire tons of foreigners who know nothing about how to landscape for our area and then expect them to do a good job. Every time I see a Brickman truck I cringe. It's not quite the gag reflex I get when I see an Asplundh truck though....

Put some pig manure in a 5 gallon bucket add water and make manure tea water your pots with it and they will look great. Smell will disappear quickly. LOL
Once late at night a drunk neighbor called us up and told us that he couldn't stand the smell of our pigs. I calmly asked him if he had noticed the run of water that ran over his driveway most of the time. That he had a septic tank problem and that was what he was smelling and Ric had been wondering for some time when he was going to fix it because we were tired of smelling his Sh..........

Aaah HAHAHAHAAA!!! Good on you!!! Sometimes people just don't smell their own sh...tuff.

I wouldn't disagree with you though some of those farm fields can really smell bad for a time and the larger factory farms are a much different thing than a small family farm. A new owner comes in an puts 500 pigs on a farm that used to have 15-20 and then when neighbors complain they say there have always been pigs here. Not quite the same thing.

In addition to oxygen, mulch volcanoes deprive roots of water, and the tree roots have to grow to the surface for water. That's why we see so many trees with roots growing on top of those mounds, wrapped around the trunks, etc.. It looks ugly, too, so what do people do? Add more mulch! The companies have a big financial incentive to add 3" of mulch every year.

I'm not against hardwood mulch; it's the only thing that will stick to steep slopes until ground cover gets established. Compost probably would work, but I don't have enough of that yet. Besides, I had the equivalent of at least 100 bags of hardwood mulch to spread around after having the stumps and surface roots of 2 (former) silver maples ground this past fall. I mixed most of it with shredded leaves and the existing pine bark nugget mulch so that water and air could get through.

Well I typed this twice earlier, I hope it sticks now...

I didn't even think to add pine bark nuggets to regular hardwood mulch to be used as an aerator and water delivery method...I'll have to remember that!

Also, I notice that a lot of DGer's don't use any hardwood mulch in their beds. I've often wondered why that is. I try to mulch everything even though it's hard because each bed is so dense with plants :)

I guess that's why this year I'm trying out a new thing: mulching in the winter!! LOL

I put out two scoops of partially composted mulch last weekend.

I notice a huge difference in the weed population when I mulch and when I don't. I'd really like to use shredded leaves. With the acres of woods, there are plenty of leaves at hand and it would look so natural, but I never seem to have the time to shred the volume that I need. I've been using the double shredded hardwood mulch lately.

The pluses of pine bark nuggets are that they allow water and air to penetrate, take years to break down (esp. the big ones), and pretty much prevent seeds from germinating. I assume it's due to terpene.

I just saw that word in this DG link: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2702/, which explains that "Terpenes are chemical molecules said to retard germination and new growth. Since I don't mulch seed beds and use pine straw only in established beds, retardation of germination is a good thing. It helps to keep weed seeds from germinating."

The minuses are that pine nuggets or shredded pine bark (called "pine fines" at Meadows Farms) also inhibit germination of seeds that you WANT to sprout, they provide a great place for slugs to hide, and they slide off sloped areas.

I can attest to the inhibition of germination. I tried growing things from seeds in pine bark covered beds with close to zero luck and assumed I was doing something wrong. On the other hand, I have close to zero weeds in those beds.

I never knew there was more to pine bark than just the physical barrier to weed seeds under it. Good stuff Muddy!

I was pretty happy when I discovered that my failed attempts to grow easy plants like sunflowers, radishes and carrots from seed weren't just due to my own ineptitude.

Muddy---
Are there any negative aspects to Fine Pines if you use it with established
plants--as a top-dressing...say? Makes a cute, fine mulch on top of pots.

I mix it into container soil if I have big pots to fill. Not seeding in there--just
growing "stuff"...

What I do not like about Hardwood Mulch is that it has huge chunks of wood and
bark and whatnot in it. At least the one HD carries. YUK!
It is also the mulch that goes on sale the most often. Dah! Like--4/$10.

I think there are better grades of hardwood mulch than what we have...
May buy it at one of my local Nurseries here.
G.

Aspen, are you saying that you saw more or less weeds with hardwood mulch?

Definitely LESS weeds - a HUGE difference. However, my gardens haven't filled in yet with established plantings, so there are lots of bare spots. I think it wouldn't be such a weed nightmare if the plantings could crowd them out.

Gita, I use the double shredded hardwood mulch and haven't been seeing any big chunks of anything. With the volume I need, Mike brings it home in the dump truck from the bulk pile at the nursery, 5 cubic yards at a time. I've never checked out the individual bags at HD, but maybe they are only single shredded, not double shredded.

The hardwood mulch we carry at work is double-shredded as well, the bulk and bagged. It's the only mulch I use, and I have rarely had trouble finding big chunks in it.

I learned something cool about hardwood mulch and Sweet Alyssum a couple years ago; I was being lazy and sprinkled my seeds directly on top of the mulch, did not cover the seeds over with anything, just sprinkled and watered... in about 5-7 days they'd germinated and soon the entire area was COVERED in those luscious sweet-smelling little flowers!! The moral to the story: You can grow Sweet Alyssum right on top of hardwood mulch, too! :)

Nice tip Speedie. I really like Sweet Alyssum - I'll have to try that.

I learned that year how much I love it - EASY to grow, and the bees and flutterbies just FLOCKED to it. Win-Win! :)

There is a company, RLO, near by me on route 1 that has beautiful mulch. It is the perfect mix of dirt and shredded hardwood.

We often top dress our beds with dbl. shredded hardwood mulch. We have for the past few years used the Lasagna method. Any permanent plantings go in a hole with compost amendment, then we put down cardboard, a layer of compost, Preen, and then top dressing of mulch. Weeding is much less of a chore. Our established beds after cleaning and amending with compost if needed, get treated with Preen, and mulched. If I have it on hand, we use corn gluten instead of Preen, especially in the veggie garden.
Yes, you heard me right I use germination inhibitors in the veggie garden. I use it on the strawberries, aspergras, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, with a lot of success. With the amount of cultivated area Holly and I have, we have to reduce the weeding as much as possible.
Also to consider is as you age your prayer bones don't like the hard ground.LOL

Another thing I'm considering is adding soaker hoses to the larger beds before mulching to try and reduce watering time. Right now it can take us both 1-2 hours a day. I realize there is a lot more waste this way, but by watering under the mulch should help offset that, and we could water 2 areas at once. :-}

need new thread to get away from that S word...
please go to
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1353384/

and let this long winter be forgotten!

This message was edited Mar 15, 2014 12:59 PM

Amen--Sally!!!