There are a number of natural mulches out there, with hardwood bark mulch, pine straw, and old hay most popular. Which is the best choice for your garden?
Spring is coming and it's time to start thinking about mulching your flower beds for the summer. Our flowerbed mulching services are very useful for you, because natural mulch is extremely beneficial for a garden. It traps moisture in the soil so you don't have to water as often, and it acts as an insulator so your plants' roots don't get too hot. (It has the same effect in the winter, keeping plants from getting to cold). It also surprises weeds, so you don't have to weed as often!
Most people's gardens grow plants that prefer their soil neutral to sweet (alkaline). Hardwood bark mulch is the best fo rhose plants. It decomposes into a rich, sweet-smelling black dirt, and it looks ever so tidy while doing it. Plus, hardwood bark mulch is the best for amending your soil.
Pine straw is good for suppressing weeds. It has a tendency to form a thick mat, and woe to the weed that tries to come through that! Pine straw however is not for every garden. Over time it can turn your soil acidic, and make it difficult to grow anything there. Some plants love acid soil. If your flower bed is primarily made up on these acid-loving plants, then pine straw is not only okay, it's perfect, and use a wide sweeping action working from the bottom of the hedge upwards, so that the cut foliage falls away.
Old hay, on the other hand, is dirt cheap. If hay gets wet and spoils, farmers can't use it to feed their animals anymore; it might kill them. For a gardener, however, that spoiled hay is exactly what your garden needs. In fact, your garden will probably like it better than the fresh, unspoiled stuff and your vegetable garden will probably like it better than the hardwood bark mulch, and you can often get an entire bale of spoiled hay fairly cheap.
The problem with old hay, of course, is that hay is made from grass (or grains). Grass in a garden are called weeds, and that hay is just chock full of seeds of its kind, plus some other weeds that may have got bundled up with it. What's a gardener to do?
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