Many years ago I went to a friend’s home and saw her vegetable garden.  It was completely covered with grass clippings.  My first thought was “Why?”  Why would anyone purposely place grass and weed seeds in his/her garden?

My 10/15 onions mulched with hay.

My friend explained the beauty of mulching to me.  Putting a heavy layer of mulch around your plants allows the plant to grow well, but chokes out the weeds.  If the occasional weed makes it through the layer of mulch, then you just add more mulch to that area.  My friend also loaned me the book, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, by Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence, which I devoured from cover to cover.

The author has gardened her whole life, but as she grew older and less able to do hard physical labor she began experimenting with different gardening techniques.  Through the years she has developed a mulching system that makes university professors travel to her place just to see her garden for themselves.  She does not till her soil or weed her garden.  Despite living in a much colder environment than Texas, she harvests vegetables year round.

She claims you can use almost anything as your mulching material.  Leaves, pine needles, bark mulch, hay, grass clippings, wood shavings, etc. are all examples that she says are suitable.  During our first year of mulching the garden, we used wood shavings from a local carpenter because we got them for free.  I do not recommend using wood shavings.  I do not know what they did to the soil exactly, but the shavings created an environment our garden plants disliked.

This is part of my herb garden also mulched with hay. The grass at the top is part of our yard, not the garden.

Now we use old, moldy hay unfit for animal consumption.  The hay we use has very little value except as mulch.  Otherwise, hay can be an expensive option.  You can probably find old hay in your area free of charge.  We have good results using hay.  The soil underneath is damp and cool.  It is rich with decomposing matter and earthworms.  The hay keeps the weeds under control.  Our garden looks nice and tidy, especially when the plants grow larger and larger.

Last year we decided not to mulch.  Our garden plot looked beautiful with the dark earth contrasting with the green plants; however, we spent a good deal of time weeding and watering the garden because the soil dried out so easily.

I recently read an interesting article about gardening and mulching.  The author uses cardboard boxes as her mulch with amazing results.  If it interests you, then read “Learn and Live Well” by Debi Pearl.

I cannot speak on cardboard boxes, maybe one year soon I will try it.  However, I certainly recommend mulching your garden with hay.  My husband always tell our kids to “work smarter, not harder.”  Mulching allows you to work smarter.  Spend more time sipping lemonade while watching your garden grow than bent over and/or squatting down to pull weeds.

Tags: Gardening, hay, mulch, No-Work Garden Book, Ruth Stout, weeding

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 7:51 am and is filed under Gardening, Homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.