I usually purchase straw at an animal feed store.

Use hay. It is much more readily available in most parts of the country. Or shredded leaves or grass clippings, or compost, or any of 50 other things. Pull up all the 'mulch' discussions here for even more suggestions.

Dave

What does nature use - leaves? Why go to the store and spend money on a inferior product... The straw lacks the minerals that the leaves provide... I wouldn't use hay, hays for horses, has seeds likeno other! For the woodchips dilemma, many gardeners find wood chips the best because of it's water holding capacity,etc.. Tree roots tape hundreds of feet down in the soil pulling up all kinds of minerals are crops can't reach, they then disperse some of those minerals in their leaves, and their trunk! Anything will off balence nitrogen/carbon ratio in soil if you till, I'm sorry.. But if you always lay your mulch or amendments on top the soil th nitrogen from the air will decompose it without worrying about the soil.. Believe it or not mulching without tilling is so much better for the soil... The question is why till? Don't till! Tree services normally chip the tree and need to dispose of it, it's a byproduct of the business, they usually are happy to drop some off a load for free! Another thing I do is grow a cover crop of winter winter rye over the winter, protects the soil and I have mulch comes spring out my ears! If I was you, save your money, look how nature does it - she never tills, only mulches with leaves and decomposing trees and that is the compost from those tree products has enough minerals for any plant to thrive! Look how healthy a forest is!!

Mulch On!
Joe

Here's A link to a video - this man never tills, fertilize, nor does he spray anything whatsoever, yet look his garden! Unbelievable!! What does he do? - mulch with wood chips and let nature do her job! Guys it that simple, always look to nature for the answers, be assured she has them...

Here is a link that might be useful: Want a good garden?

This post was edited by Raw_Nature on Thu, Mar 21, 13 at 11:21

I pick up bagged leaves placed at curbside during the fall and use them for mulch throughout the year. ... just need to be a bit selective as some folks tend to add rocks and other undesirable debris to the bags. Also, having a place for a leaf pile is most likely going to be the issue for many.

A few years ago I used straw from a bale that I purchased at my local garden center in my strawberry bed. It did keep moisture in the bed and kept the fruit clean as I expected, but is was full of weed seeds and planted a huge crop of weeds.

Never again!

I use Hay (we can't get straw here, we tried to find it and couldn't. We went to the local animal feed store and asked and he says he hasn't seen straw down here in 15+ years. He then says that local gardeners do come to him and use his hay as mulch. The heads are very immature and tiny. You have to really inspect the stuff up close to see them. So I gave it a shot. So far so good... I haven't really had any weed (or baby wheat or whatever variety this hay is) problems.

I would use grass clippings or leaves, but we really don't ever have enough for that. So I just use them for the browns (grass gets dried) in my compost.

Not true that straw has no nutrients. per pound, it is about the same as leaves. Rather, you put down a lot less of it and therefore it contributes less. Not true that wood chips as mulch absorb nitrogen from the soil. Long term, they give nitrogen to the soil. Every place has its easiest mulch. Here it is leaves and wood chips. Near a supermarket it could be cardboard (which needs to be weighed down with bricks if used alone. I weigh it down with chips).

Who said straw doesn't have nutrients? Any mulch and plant is only as nutritious is the soil it's growing in.. You think straw from a farmers field that that they grow crops in every year without remeralizing the soil is just as nutritious is a tree that reaches hundreds of feet down in the soil? If wood chips are tilled in it has to get nitrogen from someplace to decompose the carbon, where does it get it from? Put yes, any seed free plant matter on top the soil can only do good...

Joe

All this "never use straw and never use hay" stuff that comes up every time we talk about mulches, that you'll get nothing but weeds and/or they have no nutrients really irks me. It is all so wrong.

You can get weed seeds from just about anything including birds, potting soil, even grass clippings. And the so-called "weeds" you get from straw or hay aren't weeds anyway. They are sprouts of whatever the crop was - wheat, oats, barley, alfalfa, etc. They are very shallow rooted, easy to pull if they bug you so much, and if left alone contribute beneficial nutrients to the soil. They, along with shredded leaves, are considered by most experienced gardeners to be the ideal mulches. In addition it you get a really good crop of these sprouts then the odds are you didn't apply the mulch thick enough. So let's put the blame in the right place and that isn't the mulch itself.

What is a real problem is using NO mulch, leaving bare soil exposed in the garden.

Gardens grow some weeds no matter what you do. It is a fact of life. Nature. Get used to it. The perfectly weed free garden is a sterile garden. An un-mulched garden is a crime.

Guys it that simple, always look to nature for the answers, be assured she has them...

Joe - No, it isn't quite that simple. Using wood chips has it's own set of well documented problems and their ability to retain water is one of them. Tree feeder roots are quite shallow, only water tap roots run deep. Careful tilling has a number benefits and one of them is balancing the C/N ratio. And a forest isn't a vegetable garden.

I'm glad you are so happy with this particular philosophy and that particular video - flaws and all - and the Organic Gardening forum here would be the place for it. They would be happy to discuss it with you in detail.

But there are many other very acceptable methods of gardening too. Methods that many here practice quite successfully and have for decades. So repeatedly preaching it here on this forum implies a disregard for those other methods and opinions and lays the ground work for some potentially heated arguments..

That's one reason why Organic Gardening has its own forum.

Dave

Not sure what Joe is trying to say. Have you forgotten a "not" somewhere? Measurements of nutrient contents are all over the web.

If wood chips are tilled in at the end of season, they will have whatever nitrogen they got from the air, plus they will BORROW nitrogen from the soil. But who is so stupid to till in chips before they are well decomposed? It defeats the idea of mulch, which is by definition something that is on top of the soil to preserve water. By the time the chips are ready to be tilled, they have their own nitrogen and will fertilize a bit.

I use pine bark luckly HD had on sale 2 QF for $2I bought 10 pags and did not use any yet.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I can't say from experience, but I feel like grass would be ugly and also may get slimy and heat up a lot. Or does it dry out and brown rather quickly? Also, my dad uses chemical fertilizers on our lawn (of course the straw and such was probably fertilized with chemicals too...). And we don't have much leaves here as far as I see but I was considered scooping up some pine needles and using them for my strawberries.

I may try wood chips. We have them in the rest of the yard, and every time I set down a bag of soil or my watering can or something, when I go to pick it up later, there's always a bunch of earthworms and lots of castings. :D but I think ill try and find straw first!

Just south of you in San Diego county I just picked up some straw at a feed store in Escondido for $9.50 per bail. I linked a list of feed stores in Orange County below. Try calling a couple if they are near by.

I like straw because one bail covers a lot of area. I use it for the vegitable garden pathways. Closer to the plants I prefer a finer mulch. Kellogs has a good selection of products that can be used as mulch. They are good because they can be turned into the soil for the next year.

I like bark around my citrus and other trees. I use it as a *permanent* mulch as I don't like digging it in. Wood chips would also be good as a permanent mulch.

Zeuspaul

Here is a link that might be useful: Orange County Feed Stores

You are more likely to find straw at a farm supply than a suburban nursery. There are several feed stores/farm supply stores on Chapman in Orange. Call first to see if they have what you need. For bulk mulch, try Tierra Verde near the Great Park in Irvine, as is Aguinaga. I think they both have websites you can check out. Also try Orange County Master Gardeners for a resource list.

Here is a link that might be useful: Master Gardeners soil amendment list

I didn't see the last two posts! I decided to go with pine bark around my fruit trees (more permanent), and also pine bark around my strawberries. Hopefully that's not a bad idea! My strawberries will be there for 2 years so I thought it wouldn't be much of a problem and the pH is good for strawberries. I was considering using it around my vegetables but it will probably turn into a problem when I want to till the soil and such because they won't be broken down (i guess id have to scoop it out which may not go so well) So I may check out the places you mentioned as the straw probably breaks down quicker. thanks :D!

Cardboard can be useful and free to home gardeners. I put ads on Craig's List for straw/old hay and I drive around to get bales being thrown out. But straw is very expensive now. Free woodchips on top of free cardboard would be good for transplanted plants and paths. Some areas of the country have other cheap mulch materials like rice straw. Add chopped leaves are great but not good unchopped since they get slippery/nasty.

I am going to get a nice crop of oats from the straw I put on my garlic bed last fall.

Wood chips are detrimental to garden soil because they absorb nutrients (read nitrogen) out of the soil in order to break down. Straw is the same, only that it decomposes faster than wood chips. The best bet, in my humble opinion, is well rotted cow manure, which can be purchased in any garden or hardware center. Its advantages are that it adds nutrients rather than subtracts them. If well rotted, as a surface application, it will not burn plant roots. Its nice granulated texture will protect the soil surface very well. The perfect mulch.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

Cow manure is not a mulch, though it's a wonderful soil amendment. My dad grows in pure composted manure spread on top if his lawn. But if any weed seeds blow in they will love it as much as the veggies.

Best cheap/free mulch I've found is newspaper weighed down with burlap. Last year I used hay on top of burlap, the hay tends to blow away and the burlap decomposes within a year, newspaper takes longer and will blow away. Ants tend to build nests under the burlap but the worms love it too, this year I pulled the decomposed burlap off and left the sides of the mounds exposed, put what little hay I had just around the plants (didn't want to hold a lot of moisture in, June was so wet), didn't replace the burlap and the weeds (crabgrass, ragweed, and bindweed) are terrible, I'm going to have a big cleanup job when harvest is done.

But for strawberries the best mulch really is straw if you can find it (and I thought $7/bale was high!), in my zone I use leaves and pine boughs to cover for the winter. I got small bales of straw on sale last year after Halloween, also that's the time of year to ask on Freecycle and Craigslist too. Leaves just mold and cause mold/disease on the plants when used in strawberry bed. Pine needles might be good alternative to straw, I just don't have enough clean ones around here with the oaks and maples mixed in with white pine and hemlock.

Another vote for leaves. I've been using mainly leaves (oak, cedar elm, cottonwood) for almost ten years, and my soil is beautiful. Around here, leaves don't really fall in bulk until December, so I dig in lots of them around then. By March, when it's time to start things going, they are largely decomposed. If you're going to dig them in, then shredding them is helpful.

As to mulch, in mid-summer here, we get leaf drop just because of heat stressed trees. Cottonwood in particular, My neighbor has a cottonwood tree that rains stress-response dead leaves on my property. It's a happy tree, just a bit stressed, and leaf drop is a standard response. I just rake them up and pile them on my beds six inches deep between the plants. For the cucurbits, I throw the leaves on top of the plants. The cucurbit leaves find their way to the sunlight. Because the leaves are flat, they layer, and that I think makes for better soil insulation, temperature-wise.

As to grass, we don't collect clippings here, as it's warm and moist enough that lawn thatch simply isn't an issue. Yes, I guess we use clippings as mulch, but we use it on the lawn.

Pine needles work well for me, luckily my neighbor has a lot of pines and he rakes up the needles for me and I give him veggies in return. Grass clipping from my yard also work well, they don't get slimy unless they're over 4"+ deep, will dry out fast in the sun. Also collect neighborhood leaf bags in the fall but these are used mainly for compost mixing. Not sure if I'd ever use pine bark? Pine needles work great for strawberries and placed under ripening cantaloupes too.

Pine needles work well for me, luckily my neighbor has a lot of pines and he rakes up the needles for me and I give him veggies in return. Grass clipping from my yard also work well, they don't get slimy unless they're over 4"+ deep, will dry out fast in the sun. Also collect neighborhood leaf bags in the fall but these are used mainly for compost mixing. Not sure if I'd ever use pine bark? Pine needles work great for strawberries and placed under ripening cantaloupes too.

You have to use what is locally available, free or at reasonable cost. When I was gardening in GA, there was plenty of pine needle and other tree leaves everywhere. I never paid for mulch.

Wood chips is fine as mulch around the trees and shrubs but not in the garden, for the reasons already mentioned. On the other hand , I personally never liked things like card boards and newspapers as mulch. They seem too foreign plus they get slimy and mushy when wet. Grass clippings I can tolerate. But the best mulch material are: Straw, Hey, Pine needles and tree leaves(Oak, Maple..). All of those will become excellent soil amendments.