Episode 1553: Seg 1 of S10E11 Mulch is your friend - The gardening with Joey and Holly Radio show

or we're getting the program,

Holly's time for this week's joke of the week.

Okay, in honor of it, almost being spring.

Why can't the flower ride his bike?

I'm gonna say he doesn't have petals?

Yeah.

Oh, he doesn't have petals.

But the flower has, oh, the flower has petals, yeah.

But he lost his petals.

Oh, he's lost it because he's lost his petals.

Okay.

So you're close.

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Don't you lose your petals, and if you ride your bike,

where a helmet?

Uh, right.

I agree, yeah.

Let's talk about mulch.

Mulch is your friend in the garden.

Now there are many different types of mulches

in which you can certainly purchase

or you have available on your, on your property.

We're gonna talk about natural mulches.

We're not gonna talk about rubber tire mulch

or synthetic mulches.

There are gravel mulches as well,

but that is not applicable for the edible garden world.

Works great in rose beds, flower beds along the house.

Have you got pea gravel or larger stones

of some sort of unique characteristics in them?

Works wonderful.

We're gonna focus on the materials in which are biodegradable,

I guess, is the better word.

They break down.

Let's put it that way.

So let's start with straw.

Straw is the stalks of the plants in which are grown for grain.

Oh, oats straw, barley straw, wheat straw.

You wanna avoid, hey, hey is not your friend here.

Hey is the grasses that are grown

for the consumption for animals.

Contains grasses and seeds.

Yeah, I was gonna say, why don't we talk about why,

but it's because it contains grasses and seeds.

So then if you bring that into your garden,

you're adding more seeds.

And the potential of chemicals being sprayed

on those plants to kill weeds,

not the clovers or the fescue's

or whatever that particular ideal farmer grass

in which they plant life they want for animal consumption.

Now, don't feel bad if you didn't know this

because I didn't know this until, after I met Joey,

probably, I don't know the difference

between grass or hay and straw.

And I thought they were the same thing.

Well, you're not a farm person,

so and you don't have cattle or anything.

So it wouldn't be something that would,

it wouldn't be something that would mean anything.

Why would you know that?

Right, yeah.

But I think when we were generically talking about

hay or straw, we would say straw bales,

the hay bales, so straw is the more common term, I think.

Yeah, maybe I didn't know that he was what you fed animals.

I'm not really sure, I don't know, anyway.

Didn't you have a rabbit?

Yes.

That was my sister's rabbit, isn't it was Benny?

Benny, Benny.

All right, maybe more time for stories later.

Grass clippings, you can certainly use grass clippings

that you're getting out of your lawn.

Now, there is some things you want to be aware of here.

If you fed your lawn or you feed your lawn

with a weed and feed, this is, do not do this.

Leave the grasses in the yard.

The reason being that weed and feed has a persistent

herbicide, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That it is designed to kill the broad leaf plants,

your lamb's quarters, your dandy lines, those plants,

and it keeps the grass green and kills those plants.

So it is such a persistent chemical

that when you bag that grass clippings up,

take compost it, turn it to black soil,

put it in your garden, put it in your flower pots,

put it in your being containers.

It is still active and these plants,

your tomatoes, your eggplant, your potatoes,

your green beans are all broad leaf plants

and they will react negatively.

They will get curled up, they will not grow right.

And it takes years of remediation in order for that soil.

A lot of times has to be extracted and brought in

and new soil brought in.

There are ways of doing this with nematodes

and exposing the soil to oxygen and air

in order to kill this off or work this out of the soil.

But just don't do it up front

and say it's a lot of time, effort, energy.

You look up killer compost.

We'll have Jill Lample on the program in a couple of weeks

and he will, he went through all of that.

Wood chips.

Let's talk about wood chips.

So there's a lot of people think that

wood chips are bad for the garden,

for the vegetable garden,

not necessarily like the flower garden,

but they feel that they will draw,

not that flowers don't need nitrogen,

but wood chips don't draw nitrogen.

But that's the myth.

Yeah, the myth is, oh, we can't do that because it's bad.

Yeah, unless they are incorporated into it.

So when you use as a mulch,

they have no effect on the underlying soil,

nitrogen levels, except to, it could increase them over time.

So what you want to do is just,

I mean, you can mix them in a little bit,

but if you are...

Perniel, Perniel bed.

Right, it could be a Perniel bed.

Also, you could just do it in regular garden in bed.

That's not a problem.

The problem is a regular annual vegetable garden bed,

your plant green beans this year,

peppers next year, potatoes,

you're going to dig that and just wrap that one,

and then wood chips are going to fall in.

So asparagus bed, a raspberry bed, a blackberry bed,

rhubarb, something in which you can utilize

two or four inches of mulch or walk paths.

I was just going to say walk path.

If you have access to mulch or wood chip mulch,

and you want to utilize it,

those are some good options, Perniel bed,

the walk path, et cetera,

especially because walking on straw,

when it gets wet, it's very slippery.

Yeah, it's like, what chips do you have better job

for lining those paths?

Now, we'll talk about shredded paper

and pine needles in a moment here,

but I want to focus on the aspect

and the importance of why would you want to use mulch?

Mulch protects the soil.

It holds retention of moisture.

It suppresses some weeds.

It's not a weed barrier.

It is, it slows down weed seeds,

which can lead dormant in your soil

for up to 80 years based on the type of seed.

Temperature reduction studies have shown

that a three inch layer of wood chips or bark

can cover, keep the soil 20 degrees cooler

in the extreme sun in the hot summer day,

and some studies have compared to 40 degree

comparison to bare soil.

So keeping soil, bark can keep the soil 20 degrees cooler

extreme sun conditions can see a difference

of up to 40 degrees compared to bare soil.

About two to four inch thick layer.

Now, this is not applicable.

This is the same for all mulch,

but some layers maybe need to be thicker

if you're doing straw, grass clippings,

shredded leaves, pine needles, shredded paper.

Whatever you're doing,

there is going to be a significant difference

in heat of the soil under the mulch versus bare soil.

Why is that important?

Plants do want some warmth,

but a plant can do much better in most instances

if the temperature is between 70 and 80

versus 95 to 110.

Well, there you go.

I, and I agree, the mulch does help

with keeping the soil cool.

There's so many different benefits,

and I don't really know why you wouldn't use mulch

aside from the fact that maybe you just don't think

you have access or can find an easy way

to incorporate that in.

Or may not understand how beneficial it is.

And then like if you're using,

we talked about the breakdown of the wood chips,

straw, chemical seed free grass clippings,

if you have a lot of leaves,

they will break down and feed the soil.

Now it's, pine needles take a long time to break down.

They are acidic as the pine needle sets in your hand.

But once it breaks down over time,

it neutralizes and doesn't affect your pH level.

None of these types of mulches have a correlation to,

oh, it is this type of pH,

I'm gonna put it on the soil

and it will affect the soil's pH in due time.

We've heard this over and over again on social media

for years, oh, pine needles make the soil acidic.

So pine needles, we will grow something acidic

like blueberries in the area.

That's not the case, that's not how this works.

It's fun to pretend like it's science,

but it's not factual.

Right.

That's very true.

And that's another thing is that people get all sorts

of information, especially now,

because there's so many people out there

putting information in.

What can I say to get clicks?

What can I get views?

And I just want to let everybody keep that in mind

that you should use trusted resources

and make sure that you are.

What would be a trusted resource?

You can use any university extension.

So, especially if it's somewhere within your region.

Oklahoma State University, Ohio State University,

something like that.

Like if you're in some .edu,

Wisconsin State University, yeah.

Those are good.

Many sort of master gardener situation.

Now, if you search for X term or the thing,

and you got 17 different sources,

and they all say the same thing,

but one says something different,

and that one is a university extension office.

You might want to pay attention to that

because what happens on those other ones,

somebody, oh, that's a good thing.

Copy, paste, copy, paste.

I'll put it on my blog.

I'll put it on my blog.

Well, that's the thing is that a lot of people do this

for clicks.

Also, if you go look at somebody's blog

or even their social media,

and they have just a ton of followers,

and they have like one or two viral videos,

I mean, I don't know how accredited that is, right?

So I would just make sure you stick to the facts

and utilize it as resource.

When we share stuff with you, yes,

we do our due diligence to confirm

that what we are sharing is accurate.

And there are times with not just us,

but any garden radio hosts that they get things wrong.

So as a listener, you can take it for face value,

or like people do it, sure,

they'll listen to the preacher, write it down,

go home and make sure what the preacher says is right.

Double check us, verify with what we're saying.

We'll give you the avenue, you take that information

and verify it before you use it in your particular garden.