Compost as mulch huh?

He delivers no scientific proof whatsoever for his statements. Wood mulch is not the enemy he says it is. Also many rose lovers are not living on a large lot and making compost requires some space. As a rose grower I find his know-it-all attitude condescending.

On the Internet, everyone's an expert!

I did pick up a bunch of cotton burr compost bags for cheap and will be spreading it on some of my beds this year to see how that does.

Articles as this would not be a problem but for the poor people who will take his word as gospel.

Hmm. Tomorrow I was planning to spread some compost under my roses topped with a layer of wood mulch to help retain moisture. The part about various fungi (good and bad) thriving in decomposing wood makes sense to me. I think I might take his suggestion to remove and compost the old wood mulch prior to this year's application.

I actually replaced our store bought shredded wood mulch a few years ago and now only use compost. I am seeing better results here... Because we get a decent amount of rain everything was staying to wet with the shredded wood mulch and causing me problems...

Personally here I will never use shredded wood chips again around plants... Like everything in life certain things can benefit some people while it can be hindering for others...

Another thing I noticed was our flowers in compost grew much better than those in wood chipped only areas. So I use compost everywhere now and have stopped using fertilizer...

The man compares wood mulch with compost which really isn't fair. Compost is a good all-round rich food for roses. Spreading compost around the base of a rose bush will supply enough fertilizer for the season. Mulch is to keep the roots cool and moist which is what roses love. Helps to keep the stress down for roses when the temperature rises. Fine ground wood mulch will break down and make soil in few years time. Also good for roses.

No need to remove old compost either. I never have any old compost left anyway. The soil web breaks it all down for the plants to use. If they are going to get rid of everything each year wish I could have it.

I like to put wood mulch on top of the compost to reduce the amount of weeding I need to do. But, you can certainly get lots of beneficial exercise pulling weeds.
article about weed seeds in compost

I'm with you, Patty... Bring me your old wood mulch!!!

The poor man who wrote this article would have a coronary if he saw how I treated my roses! Some have big pine bark chips and are planted 3 inches from my concrete basement wall. Some are planted the same distance from the concrete with chopped rose canes for mulch. All are fed Osmocote 1/4 cup per rose bush once a year at the end of March. They really thrive on this treatment and bloom like nuts. I'm not saying everyone should do this because of rose diseases that we don't have... I would never, ever dream of taking mulch off of roses here though. I just throw the fert on top and rinse it in. They get 6-8 hours of drip irrigation once a week and I step back and watch the show!!

Rebecca

thank you for this fantastic info Samuel!

Again, location, location, location.... I use compost directly under the roses, but it can't be mulch for the entire bed. If you have clay soil, it needs to be covered by something stronger than compost to keep the soil most and cool. And, if you use your old mulch to make compost, it still has the fungal spores in it. But Sam is right, wood mulch should not be up against the graft or base of the roses.

How is wood mulch "stronger" than compost to keep the soil moist and cool? That's new to me.

The wood forms a tighter bond over the top of the soil than does the light fluffy compost. If you live in an area thats prone to hot dry weather wood mulch does work better. The south is also prone to heavy bouts of rain that will wash away your compost and soil if its left uncovered. You don't want to let that Georgia clay dry out its murderous to rehydrate.

Why can't compost be mulch for the entire bed? It's my normal routine and have satisfactory results with it.

Compost dries up and bakes in the sun. Maybe if you live up north you don't have this problem. But down in the south and with clay soil, you need at least 2 inches of wood mulch to keep the clay from baking into cement.

Adding compost to the soil is good. Putting compost down directly under the roses is good. Everything else has to be covered with at least 2 inches of wood bark mulch or pine straw or it will bake and turn into cement. Even my compost pile dries out and cracks if it doesn't rain for a few days.

I find I need to tailor advice to my particular soil and climate--which varies quite a bit even in a state as small as Connecticut. For instance, if you continue reading that article it goes into crabgrass prevention. I just attended a pesticide presentation and was told that it doesn't work in our climate--it will rain and you will just be fertilizing the weeds so they grow big and tall!

I use all the compost I manage to make in my three large compost bins and two leafmold cages but it is never enough. I don't think any garden whatever size can produce enough compost.

I have to buy bags of composted bark for improving my heavy clay. I use bark chips as mulch only on my gallica hedge mainly for esthetic reasons because it is not underplanted. Bark chips are also composted with time and consume nitrogen in the process so this mulch needs more fertilizer added than garden compost. I hand water bark chips with a liquid feed.

My situation is more or less the same. My homemade compost is not enough. Buying bagged compost is an option though expensive, approx. $6 for 40 litres. Fortunately my city is the home of one of the biggest composting facilities in the country. Local citizens may haul free compost from them for which they dumped a few truckloads just outside the company's gates. 20 minutes of shoveling gives me 200 litres of beautiful compost of the same quality as one can buy at the garden centres. My homemade compost is exclusively used on my rhododendron en skimmia beds, as they like my shredded leaves/coffee grounds stuff without lime.

As temperatures seldom hit the 90s in Holland, "baking" compost never becomes a real issue. I apply something like one inch and the worms take care of that in three or four months.

I've been to the rose trial gardens at the University of Georgia. They use pine bark as mulch. As I said, directly under the rose is where we put compost. But it would not be adequate for the whole bed.

Composted wood chips are--compost. It's not the most carefully and precisely written article.

As to:

""Although in time uncomposted materials will eventually decompose, adding undecomposed materials directly to the soil without first composting may have some undesirable effects." ",

Note the "adding...directly to the soil". Laying uncomposted materials on the soil SURFACE as mulch isn't the same as mixing uncomposted material INTO the soil. Again, more careful writing would help.

In nature, leaves and stems and twigs fall to the ground and lay there on top of the soil, decomposing for some period of time that varies by climate and weather conditions. Plants have evolved over millions of years to handle this decomposition process that goes on around them on the soil surface. Tests have shown that plant roots more easily absorb the micronutrients in decomposing plant material than minerals in the soil.

I use composted wood mulch for winter protection on all my roses every winter.....and there is no way I could remove all the mulch and replace it with new. He is a dreamer...... :-)

Here is a video of Mike McGrath from Philadelphia on composting at the TED Talk.

https://youtu.be/n9OhxKlrWwc

Years ago I needed the decomposed mulch to give my roses somewhere for the roots to grow that is above the water table. I then learned to compost all my leaves, so that I could make a new rose bed with a foot of compost piled onto the existing clay--the roses loved that. Now that I have plenty of compost, I've noticed that my soil is often quite now good--it was mostly clay when I first started gardening.