Laying down mulch over the soil in a garden has many benefits but it can be quite expensive if you have to buy it in regularly to cover a large area. The solution to cutting down that expense is to grow some of your own mulches.
Sugar cane mulch helps to protect the soil around seedlings like this little lettuce.
At our place, we have regularly used (and had to buy) sugar cane and lucerne mulches for our garden beds and veggie patch plus a coarser bark for laying down around native plants. We are hoping to cut down on how much of this mulch we need to buy, especially for the garden beds where shrubs and flowers are the predominate plantings. We are going to grow and make some of our own mulch instead!
The long, dry leaves of lemongrass laid around the base of a native raspberry plant.
I learnt a lot more about plants that I can grow for mulches at the Introduction to Permaculture course I completed in at the City Farm recently. Our teacher for this course, Morag Gamble, has this great list of plants you can grow as/for mulch over on her blog, Our Permaculture Life. At our place, in our suburban garden, we've chosen to plant more lemongrass and to start growing Canna Lily (Queensland Arrowroot variety) to increase the amount of our own mulch available for use in our garden.
One of many newly planted lemongrasses in our garden.
Lemongrass and Canna Lily grow quite abundantly in our climate so they are very suitable as "chop and drop" mulches, where you simply cut back the plants and let the leaves/stems fall to cover the soil.
A new Canna Lily leaf emerges just weeks after planting divided rhizomes.
We also have an abundance of prunings, from the shrubs that grow well in our garden, at various times of the year. To make better use of these for mulch, we decided to invest in a little mulching machine. We used some gift cards we had been given by family last Christmas to put towards the cost of our new mulcher.
Our new mulching machine.
By growing more plants for mulches and by putting suitable garden clippings through our little mulcher, we should save some money and also make better use of the organic material our own garden supplies us with.
Do you grow plants for mulch in your garden?
Meg
Meg your little mulcher will pay for itself in no time. We have lots of overhanging plants from our neighbours yards. We cut the branches down and let them dry, before putting them through the mulcher. We also buy bales of sugar cane straw from a local farmer. If we need the hay to be of a finer cut we run the mower over it. Still a lot cheaper than the store bought sugar cane mulch. I grow cow pea in the beds that get too hot in summer to grow much. This is a green mulch, ground cover over summer and then cut and new hay placed over the top. It is now a green manure.
ReplyDeleteWe had thought about buying a mulcher for a while, Jane, and I'm glad that we did. Although it is not a top-of-the-range model, it has a good warranty. I like you tip about using the mower to achieve a finer mulch. There is a produce store in a little township about 15mins drive from here and I might see if I can source bales of sugar cane mulch from them next time. Meg:)
DeleteI plan to grow some plants to use as mulch in the future Meg. We do have a mulcher, it is great for banana leaves, smaller palm fronds - they are considered to be high in silica, and tree, shrub prunings.
ReplyDeleteI think our mulcher will come in very handy, Sherri. I know it's an expense at first but I think it will save money in the long run. We've used it to mulch up some native ginger leaves/stems that we trimmed last week and it worked well, chopping them down quite finely. Meg:)
DeleteMeg, our Queensland Arrowroot and lemongrass grow extremely well here even though it is much cooler than where you live. I always intend to cook up the arrowroot tubers but never get around to it. I need to do some mulching I think.
ReplyDeleteIf you've got an abundance of lemongrass and Qld Arrowroot, Chel, then you've got mulch! I got a root bound pot of the arrowroot from the city farm nursery for $5 (they had it out the back) and was able to divide that into 7 little plants. Bargain! I had one clump of lemongrass growing already, I bought 4 more small plants plus got some little ones out of the clump I already had. I hope they all grow. Happy mulching! Meg:)
DeleteHow rewarding for you Meg to grow your own mulch. I've seen a few of Morag's videos and visit her site from time to time. Very inspiring.
ReplyDeleteYour mulching machine will come in very handy I believe.
I think the mulching machine is a good little investment, Kylie. We have plenty of healthy shrubs growing happily in our garden and so can use these prunings to put through the machine. We also have lots of native ginger growing here (under our front verandah) and have already cut that back and put it through the mulching machine. Easy! Meg:)
DeleteIt's great you are implementing what you learned in your Permaculture course. You won't regret the investment in chop and drop plants to you're garden. They're so handy, and therapeutic (I think) when you get out with the hedge clippers and pruners. Oh, and that lemongrass - such a divine smell it leaves behind afterwards!
ReplyDeleteI was planning to do a blog about the mulch plants I use here, in May. I have some of the ones you've got, but also some surprising ones which are quite unremarkable, easy to come by and grow like the dickens, even in the dry. I find the problem is getting plants to grow mulch, when it hasn't been raining, which these extra plants, do. I look forward to sharing that post some time next month.
I will look out for your mulch post, Chris, because the more mulch plants we can grow, the more mulch we'll have! I learnt a lot from the permaculture course I did, even though it was only a weekend. I have a list as long as my arm of things to think about and do! Meg:)
DeleteGood on you love, another wonderful addition to your garden, my darling dad invested in a mulcher when he was alive and well, he loved his garden and knew mulching in our climate was essential. Such a benefit for the garden, I love the idea of chop and drop if only I had more room to grow plants destined for mulch. On another note I noticed your compost tumbler , do you find it works welI?I have a worm farm that is not quite keeping up with our fruit and veggie scraps, As we don't have room for compost bays I was thinking about getting a tumbler,but, I had read mixed reviews. How do you find them?
ReplyDeleteFi
I have found that these compost tumblers work well, as long as we remember to tumble them often! Tumbling helps to aerate the material inside and that's important for making compost.
DeleteI think it's essential to have two because once one is full, and you are waiting for that compost to be ready, you start filling the next one. One thing I don't like about these particular tumblers is how low to the ground the are and how hard it is for me to tumble them when they are full and heavy. If I wasn't limited by money, I would want a barrel tumbler with a handle that I can turn without having to bend down to do it. I hope that helps. Meg:)