I just don't understand what I should use. And reading this forum provides a lot of doom and gloom about the issue, not a lot of answers!! :)

Don't read quite so much "gloom and doom" into some of the answers. ;)

There are potential problems with any of the many mulches available but the benefits of mulching will outweigh the disadvantages of any of them and the benefit to the garden vs. NO mulch at all can't be measured.

Hay and straw - may or may not have seeds in them. We use hay because we have and mow our own and straw is expensive here. But I would use straw if I could afford it. Year old hay has some seeds yes, but if used correctly and layered on thickly (4-6") few of them sprout and what does can be easily pulled. What few seeds found in straw are also easily pulled. Both will stabilized soil moisture levels, stops most all weeds, and feed the plants and the soil as they decompose. Come season end it can easily be tilled in for drastic soil improvement.

Landscape fabric isn't truly a "mulch". It will pre-warm soil which is great, retain moisture if the soil is well wet first and if soaker hose is placed under it, not on top. It will stop weeds but as it gets warm out it needs to be covered with something else to keep from cooking the roots. End of the year you just strip off the plastic and toss it.

Wood chips and bags of bark mulch, while great for flower beds, don't really work in the vegetable garden IMO except for garden paths. They have to be laid on so thickly to work as a weed block, and once mixed into the soil they can bind up nitrogen. While on top of the soil that is no problem but come fall when you mix them in you will need to add additional N to the soil. Plus if you till, they pose problems for the tiller and do nothing for the soil improvement.

Shredded fall leaves if you have them ware a great mulch and free. Blocks weeds, retains moisture, and benefit the soil. If it is really windy though they can be difficult to keep in place until they mat down.

Cardboard and multiple sheets of newspaper is another good approach. Only drawback is appearance and that is taken care of by covering them with mowed grass clippings or compost.

Compost is another good one for both the soil and the plants but isn't as effective as a weed block so is often used paired with landscape fabric or newspaper.

I'm sure I have forgotten to mention several other mulching materials but you should get the idea. ;)

Dave

Please note that 3 other folks have posted replies to your question on the forum but you'll have to go to the forum to read them as they were not attached to this thread.

Dave

In addition to the other (3) unattached posts which seems to answer your question, you may also want to plan ahead for next year's garden and consider leaf mulch. I have done well with using fall curbside collected bagged leaves as a mulch. The challenge is in finding bagged leaves that contain ONLY leaves. This takes a bit of extra scrutiny.

I keep the leaves in the bags until ready for use. The bags help maintain decomposition heat. Poking holes in the bag to allow rainwater to soak in which also helps in decomposition. Also keeping the leaves bagged makes it easier to drag the bags to the garden for applying the mulch. I have found that unused bags in which are their second year of decompostion will generally be full of earthworms. However, one problem with this method is having a place for maintaining what might be a very large pile of bagged leaves.

Links to mulch answers (There seems to have been a brief glitch in follow-up postings.)

odiedragon...mulch question

mulching

Odiedragon, about mulch

Grandad,

I'm interested in the leaf option. How do you keep the leaves from gettng moldy when they're piled up like that??

If you don't feel like mulching, don't do it. I have yet to see that mulched vegetable gardens are superior to unmulched gardens, or vice versa. It's a matter of how you want to proceed, what types of maintenance you're more comfortable with. Weeds are easily managed with a sharp hoe, easier year after year. Or you can mulch. Do you need to keep the soil temperature down? Probably not, but possibly. Water conservation? There's controversy among experts whether mulching preserves water or not. My own experience tells me that keeping the top inches of soil nice and loose retains as much moisture as a mulch, when you consider that the mulch itself absorbs water at watering time and "wicks" water as it dries. Again, the choice is yours... what works for you.

Don't worry about the mold...in this case its called "Mould". Google LEAF MOULD and you will see all that you need.

If you are anywhere near Madison, Olbrich Gardens sells their own leaf mulch on April 17 and 18.

My advice is to get some straw - not hay. Straw allegedly has fewer weed seeds. I used straw as mulch last year and I worked out very well.

What I did last year was plant my garden in mid-May, then waited a week or two to let the plants settle in. It was still early so weeds were not yet really sprouting. I then laid 2 layers of newspaper (to block weeds) all around the garden, then covered it all with straw. I watered it down and it was done! The only weeds I had all year were around the base of the plants where the newspaper stopped. The straw also made a nice, clean walking surface.

I found this worked much better than wood mulch, which was inundated with weeds by Mid-July when I used it in 2007.

Good luck!

Cherylco, most of the bags of leaves don't develop mold/mould (noting EaglesGarden response). Those that do aren't a problem. I just mulch with them like the rest.

I think the mulch question has been addressed by the other posters, but no one said anything about your garden plan. I would suggest not having the tomatoes at the southern edge of your plot because those guys get pretty tall and late in the season, they will shade the rest of the garden. Same goes for putting the trellises "south" of the herb garden. This might not be a big deal, just something to consider. That said, I'm super jealous of your wide open sunny spot. Have a great season!

In the chillier and sometimes wet midwest you may wish to delay mulching until mid- June to allow soil to warm up and not remain too wet. Those in hot and/or drier areas may not really grasp this very well.

Wayne is on to something. Even down here in zone 8, I don't mulch until the soil starts getting pretty warm and the rainy spring is over. I want the soil warm and soaking up as much moisture as it can before the blast furnace called summer arrives.

you may wish to delay mulching until mid- June to allow soil to warm up and not remain too wet.

Excellent point - with the exception of the black landscape fabric. You can use it to pre-warm the soil and so plant much earlier.

Dave

I have been mulching with spoiled hay for over 40 years, and for the last 15 have a permanent bed, no till, permanent mulch garden. Only once, in all those years, did I get hay that had been cut when the grass was so mature that it was full of seed. I have zero weeds in my garden except for an occasional dandelion in the wood chip mulched paths. BTW, I live in the country, surrounded by woods and open fields.

It's easy, easy, easy. Mulch coserves water, keeps the soil temps even, adds organic material to the soil, and you never have to hoe. What more could a gardener want!?

This isnt a mulch answer, but: Are those shrubs or small trees right beside the garden? Depending on what they are, won't they steal nutrients from the garden or eventually shade it depending on which side they are? Just a thought.

In the end, any organic mulch is an organic input to the soil. Along the way it can serve various useful purposes, primarily moisture retention and weed suppression. The main thing is that different materials behave quite differently in the short term, sometimes in an inconvenient manner. Also there is the question of soil type, sandy soils require higher quality mulches while heavy soils can often stand direct application of crude stuff like wood-chips because OM breaks down faster in heavy wet soil.

Generally, all OM is good. Wood-chips and leaves can be piled up and left for years to break down near the garden. Straw, hay, grass-clippings, manure, cardboard and/or anything that breaks down fairly quickly can go right on. I make considerable use of old boards in pathways to suppress weeds and hold in moisture, and move them around to cover seeded areas while sprouting. Some have taken up to ten years to turn into humus. Highly useful and eventually an input.

Would be nice for us to hear back from the original poster to know if all of this great info is helping or just raising more questions. ;)

odiedragon - if you aren't getting these emails then you will find them in your junk box due to your mail filter.

Dave

One suggestion I might add. You might want to consider the dill in a container out of the garden. They reseed very easily and will for ever be pulling out volunteers that try to take over your garden.

Might want to seperate the herbs into annuals and perennials also. Make it easier down the road for you. unless you plan to treat all of them as annuals.

Wow, what a great, sunny location for your garden! Regarding the tilling, you should do some research on lasagna gardening--you can kill a couple of birds with one stone on that one (adding good nutrient to a new garden, preventing the grass regrowing/growing through, and NO MORE TILLING!!!). Lasagna gardening is simply layering (lasagna style!) mulch and compostable materials into your garden until the garden itself is compost. Furthermore, it supposedly results in no new weeds (I am only just trying it out, container-style, this year for the first time), but that may depend upon the layers that you use and what's in them. It's probably too late to find some fall leaves, unless you have a local extension or agency that can point you to some--I have some for my composter, but I ain't shippin' 'em to ya' from Colorado!!! Besides, I need them for my own garden. ;-D

Anyway, you have more than enough "mulch" answers here--very good, all of them. Points to remember: different things work for different people, different climates, and different end purposes. Maybe you don't mind pulling the occasional weed or two, in which case, straw or hay might not be a problem.

You've gotten some great advice from some seasoned gardeners, here, and if I may make one more suggestion on your garden plan, check which things grow shorter than others, and put those all on the south side. Cukes, lettuce, radishes should all be to the south of peas, tomatoes, and most herbs (although, herbs should be south of the peas & 'maters). I would even suggest doing the herbs in pots that you can pull out come wintertime--there's nothing like fresh herbs in the deepest darkest pit of winter. One comment I must make, however, is that, according to the size/scale of your wheelbarrow, your plot doesn't look even close to large enough for what your plan shows--pumpkins can take over an entire garden, and tomatoes, well, they have a character all their own! If that's your house in the background, surely you won't be feeding the small army that 8 tomato plants will produce in your zone. Be sure to give enough room for everything, and if this is your first (or even second or third... or twenty-third!) attempt at gardening, it's common (a common "sickness" among gardeners?) to try to put to much into too small a space. Go with less-you'll be able to figure out what works and doesn't, what you'd try again and what you'd do differently. Do keep a journal of your dates, notes, etc (it doesn't have to be formal, but I do suggest using a non-water-soluble pen, since it's not uncommon for garden journals to get "watered" with the rest of the garden from time to time!) so you'll know what's what for next year. And yes, just like in sports, "there's always next year!"

Welcome to gardening, and please post back to let us know how your garden turns out! You're very wise to plan in such detail!!!

Wow! Thank you everyone... I didn't check back here because I hadn't gotten any email notification of replies.

I think I'll try to find a source for some straw, which isn't too hard out here. I just searched Craigslist and found several people to contact.

Though the Olbrich Gardens idea is fabulous! We live about half an hour NW of Madison, I'll totally have to check that out.

I've worried about the shrubs too. We planted them before we decided to put in the garden, to eventually try and block those fugly electric boxes in the corner of our yard. We bought this house new, so it had zero landscaping. But, that being said, they're on the northeast corner of the garden, so I don't think their shade will be too much of a problem. If it is, we'll trim them back I suppose. The whole plot gets a lot of sun (though you never know when someone will build a house in the lot behind us) and it's also at a low spot of the yard. When the rest of the grass in the yard turns brown in the summer, that plot was still green. And, since we're on such sandy soil, the water drains well instead of pooling.

Can you use the lasagna garden technique over winter rye? I think we're going to want to over-winter more of that this fall, and that's why we're tilling the plot so thoroughly. That, and my FIL gave us a hand-me-down tiller for free. :D It's an cranky old beast (It must channel some of it's previous owner!! I kid. Mostly.) but it works way better than the one we rented in the fall... that was a NIGHTMARE. I read lots of horror stories about breaking up plots of winter rye, and that beast chewed it right up. So anyway, tilling isn't a huge issue around here.

I do think I may swap the peppers and the tomato placement. I just wanted to make sure my tomatoes got as much light as possible :) We found a baggie of frozen pasta sauce in the bowels of the freezer last night, made from the batch of Amish Paste tomatoes I got last year... and WOW it was good. So much better than the stuff I've been making from canned tomatoes. I can't wait to start having fresh ones and building up my sauce supply.

Thank you again everyone! I wasn't trying to ignore anyone, promise!

I didn't check back here because I hadn't gotten any email notification of replies.

As mentioned above, many e-mail filters automatically route GW replies to your junk or spam file. So until you tell your mail filter they aren't junk/spam, you'll find all the replies in those boxes.

Given your number of posts lately, I'm betting your junk/spam boxes are pretty full because I know you have gotten lots of replies. ;)

Dave