Houseworks: Why garden mulching matters 

One of several heavily mulched perennial gardens at Maxwell’s house. Maintaining deep layers of mulch cuts weeding by at least 95 per cent.  Photo by Steve Maxwell

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After 35-plus years of flower gardening, I’ve found that mulch is one of the most valuable materials any gardener can use, not because it does one thing well but because it does several important things all at the same time. Mulch makes gardens look better, cuts down on weeding a lot, helps plants through dry weather, and improves the soil year after year by steadily increasing organic matter. After decades of gardening, I’ve come to see mulch as less of an optional finishing touch and more of an essential part of how a good garden works. 

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Why mulch is amazing 

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One of the biggest benefits of mulch is the way it constantly breaks down and adds life-giving organic matter to the soil. This happens slowly, but over time the effect is dramatic. Here at our place, we’ve kept our flower gardens mulched ever since we started. The result is a rich, dark soil with an organic matter content of about eight per cent. Just outside the garden, where the soil has never been mulched, organic matter is about three per cent. That’s a huge difference, and it shows what a steady supply of decomposing mulch can do. The soil in mulched areas becomes looser, richer, and better able to support healthy plant growth. Essentially, when you mulch, you’re feeding soil microbes and that has huge benefits. 

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Mulch also does a remarkable job of reducing weed pressure. This is the biggest benefit for me. Bare soil is an open invitation for weed seeds to sprout, but a layer of mulch blocks light and makes it much harder for weeds to get established. This doesn’t mean weeds never appear. Nature is persistent. Still, the difference is enormous. Instead of fighting a constant wave of weeds, you deal with only the occasional one that manages to work its way through. And when that happens, it’s easy to pull out because the mulch keeps the soil underneath soft and loose. There’s no way we could keep all our gardens the way we do if we had to keep up with bare-soil weeding. 

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Moisture retention is another huge advantage. Mulch shades the soil surface and reduces evaporation, which means the ground stays moist. While other gardens in our area are shrivelled and dry in summer, ours still look perfect and without watering. Plants growing in mulched soil thrive because their roots stay in a cooler and more evenly moist environment.  

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Maxwell loading bulk cedar mulch into a garden cart for replenishing perennial and annual gardens around his house. Photo by Robert Maxwell

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How to mulch your garden 

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First of all you need a lot of mulch – probably more than you think. Aim to maintain three to four inches of fully settled mulch on the soil surface. At an absolute minimum, you want at least two inches, but more is usually better. In practice, this means applying five or six inches of depth when the mulch first goes down, because fresh mulch is fluffy and will compress.  A proper settled depth is what gives you the soil-building, moisture-holding, and weed-suppressing benefits that make mulch so worthwhile. 

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Bulk mulch option 

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Here at our place, we use cedar mulch produced locally from ground-up sawmill waste left over from milling cedar lumber. It works well, looks good, and makes use of a material that might otherwise go to waste. I’ve bought mulch in bags before, and bagged mulch certainly has its place. But we garden enough that it makes more sense for us to have mulch brought in by the truckload. That’s the most economical approach for larger garden areas. 

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If it weren’t for our mulching regime, our gardens would either look terrible or we’d be run off our feet weeding them, perhaps both.  Mulch is one of those rare garden inputs that pays you back in almost every way possible. It builds soil, holds moisture, reduces weeds, and improves appearance all at once. For any serious gardener, that’s hard to beat. 

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Steve Maxwell needs to order more mulch for mulching in the fall. Visit him online at baileylineroad.com for made-in-Canada insights on home improvements, renovation, gardening and outdoor living. 

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