Advantages of Mulch: 11 Handy Home Uses For Mulch
Mulch is often considered a gardener’s best friend. The advantages of mulch are many. Here is a shortlist that includes some real standouts that any homeowner would benefit from knowing.
Advantages of Mulch For Weed Control:
One of the primary benefits of mulch is its ability to suppress weeds. Mulch acts as a physical barrier, making it difficult for weeds to grow up and sunlight to get in.
Choosing the right kind of mulch is important. Wood chip mulch is one of the best mulches you can use for weed control. Wood chip mulch has the right weight and texture to interlock and keep weed seeds at bay.
The additional benefit of wood chip mulch is that it’s organic and will break down over time adding to your overall soil health.
If you want to take this process one step further, consider adding a base layer under your mulch such as shredded newspaper (paper mulch) or a more popular option like cardboard.
To do things right, you’ll first want to clear any existing weeds from the area.
If you’ll then be planting through the mulch it would be a good idea to water the ground for better moisture retention, just make sure to avoid direct contact with stems or tree trunks to prevent anything rot related.
You’ll want to aim for 2-4 inches for the best weed control. If you’re deciding to use an organic mulch (and I would,) it will break down over time, adding to your soil health. Just add mulch yearly up to that 2-4 inch depth.
If you live in an area that has frequent, strong winds or receives regular heavy rainfall, you might also want to consider a mulch fabric layer underneath your mulch. This will help anchor the mulch preventing it from blowing or washing away.
If you’re working in an area with lots of delicate seedlings such as spreading grass seed, you may want to consider using straw as mulch to provide immediate protection that will either decompose quickly or be easily removable. For the particulars about using mulch over grass seed, I have a full article here.
Advantages of Mulch for Moisture Retention:
Another advantage of mulch is moisture retention. Water is one of the most essential components of healthy plant life.
Choosing the right kind of mulch will determine how well it will retain moisture. The best choice will be wood chip mulch or straw mulch. These types of mulch will actually hold water, saving it for future use. Try coconut mulch for an exotic feel.
If using an inorganic mulch such as gravel or rubber for water retention, you’ll still be protecting it from the sun and the wind (two of the biggest causes of evaporation,) by acting as a barrier between the two.
By reducing the amount of surface area contact with the air and your soil, evaporation is reduced.
Soil Improvement:
Healthy soil is a cornerstone of a thriving garden. While protecting your soil, organic mulch will also act as a natural fertilizer for your garden.
I prefer organic mulch like wood chip, straw, and leaf mulch because over time they actually break down, adding organic matter directly into your soil.
Mulch can also be an inviting environment for the often unseen MVPs of any garden, worms. Organic mulch offers shelter for worms as well as food. Feeding on the mulch aids in the breakdown process, and the byproduct of a worm eating is pure gold to a garden.
As worms make their home in and more importantly underneath your mulch, they’ll also play a great role in aerating your soil.
Mulch also acts as a shield from soil-borne diseases that could harm your plants. As you water and during rainfall diseased soil can splash onto your plants.
If you have a layer of mulch between the soil and the tender leaves, that contact becomes nonexistent.
Mulch can even be used to fill holes and low spots in your yard in place of soil.
Erosion Control:
Mulch helps to break the impact of raindrops, dispersing them more evenly. This prevents soil erosion and also keeps your soil from washing away or “running off.” Too much water can wash out the nutrients from your soil as well.
A heavier mulch is preferable here, so gravel would be a fine option. Wood chip is a nice choice and my overall favorite. You may want to go heavier on straw or pine straw if using it for erosion control, or maybe consider incorporating some mulch fabric. This is especially important for keeping grass seed in place, as it is easily carried away. Read more on how to use mulch over grass seed here.
Advantages of Mulch For Temperature Regulation:
Very similar to moisture retention, mulch is quite often used for its ability to regulate soil temperatures. This is possible because mulch not only acts as a barrier from the sun and wind, but it also functions as insulation.
Scorching heat from the sun can rapidly dry out the soil and harm fragile top roots. Adding a layer of mulch is like putting your soil in the shade. The added benefit of the above-mentioned moisture retention is cooler soil.
Mulch doesn’t just protect your garden from heat, it works on the other end of the spectrum as well. Mulch will act like a blanket for your soil, keeping it warm especially over night. If your soil gets too cold, it can dry and crack, exposing plant roots. Roots that are revealed this was are especially vulnerable and often don’t survive.
A final cold weather benefit of mulch in your garden is that it can allow your plants to go fully dormant when they’re meant to. If a plant starts the dormancy process and you experience an unseasonably warm day, that process is halted and sometimes reversed, harming your plants. The temperature regulation keeps this from happening.
Aesthetics of Your Home and Garden:
In addition to the practical uses for mulch and plant health, mulch can add a lot of value by improving the aesthetics of your home landscape, and gardens.
A darker colored mulch can really serve as a great backdrop for a vibrant flower bed really allowing the bright colors to pop. Pine, cedar, and cypress are some naturally dark mulches.
If you’re looking for some no maintenance, dark mulches crushed lava rock is a sure stand out. This mulch doesn’t break down and provides excellent drainage.
Rubber mulch is another great choice for mulch that doesn’t break down yet adds good contrast with the benefit of aiding drainage. This mulch is a top choice for children’s areas, especially under swing sets.
Advantages of Mulch For Walkways and Pathways:
A mulch pathway is a perfect balance between function and aesthetics. Mulch pathways offer a lot of versatility. You have plenty of options as far as types of mulch to use for a pathway.
Width and depth of your mulch pathway is important to consider but easy to control. Mulch can be a much more cost considerate option vs. something like brick or cement.
A mulch pathway offers many benefits such as traction, erosion control and most importantly weed prevention. I go into greater detail in this article about mulch pathways if you’re interested in all of the benefits that they offer.
Mulch For Raised Beds and Container Gardening:
Mulch is a great boon for any raised bed or container garden. Using mulch will ensure that your plants stay moist and maintain a proper temperature.
This is especially important in raised beds and containers. Raised beds can dry out rather quickly as being above ground they don’t keep as cool in the summer. In the winter, the inverse is true.
Mulch can be a great defense against soil-borne disease by acting as a physical barrier between the soil and the leaves of your plants.
Over time, mulch can add quite a lot of organic material to your raised bed garden. As it breaks down, it fertilizes the soil. Often, raised bed gardens can start settling, requiring you to add additional material yearly. Mulch fills this need incredibly well. As the old mulch breaks down, you can replace it with a new layer, adding to the overall soil health.
Protecting Trees With Mulch:
Trees are an asset to any landscape. They are beautiful to look at, provide shade, are integral to water management and if they’re fruit trees, can provide abundant food.
Mulch is a natural moisture retainer, locking moisture in, making it readily available for tree roots. Well watered roots are essential to healthy tree growth.
Mulch is also a fantastic weed suppressant. The reason that this is important to tree health is nutrient availability. Weeds will compete for nutrients as well as water around your tree.
Mulch around the base of the tree also makes maintaining the area around your tree much easier. Half of the reason that I mulch my own trees is to cut down on the mowing around them. Mowing around a tree also creates a risk for compacting the soil surrounding it, compromising the health of your tree.
As mulch breaks down it also feeds the soil surrounding the tree. Worms will also be attracted to the mulch, nourishing and aerating the soil.
Mulch for use in Compost:
If there is anything that comes close to the advantages of mulch, it would be compost. In a lot of ways, they can work hand in hand. You can mulch with compost and you can in part make compost with mulch.
When using organic mulch in compost you gain the benefits of moisture retention. Moisture is a key component of compost. You also gain the benefit of better air circulation, a second key ingredient of compost. Mulch can help keep the compost from matting and becoming anaerobic. When a compost pile becomes anaerobic, that’s when it starts to smell.
Organic mulch is an excellent source of carbon and as it breaks down it will slowly release nutrients into your compost.
Compost is an excellent use for excess mulch. It’s very easy to source too much, especially when buying in bulk. I turn my excess directly into my compost to ensure that none goes to waste.
Natural Pest Control With Mulch:
Many people wonder if mulch will attract pests. While mulch can be an inviting food source for many insects, there are a few ways that mulch can actually repel pests.
Cedar, Cypress, and Pine mulch all contain oils that naturally repel certain pests such as beetles, moths, ants, and cockroaches. Many pests rely on smell to find their food. While pleasant to us, the smell of these mulches serves to mask the smell of plant food from pests.
If you’re using mulch, particularly shredded mulch, certain insects are deterred from physically traveling over the mulch. Snails, and slugs. These pests prefer to glide over smooth surfaces and are greatly disrupted by the coarseness of most mulch. Charles Dowding, a renowned gardener puts great value into compost as mulch to prevent slug infestation.
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