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WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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Posted by
PunkRotten 9b (
My Page) on
Sat, Aug 27, 11 at 19:48
| Hi,
What is the best and cheapest mulch available? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| Shredded leaves are free. Just need to use your mulcher mower on the fallen leaves in about a month or two. I think they are the best! If you don't get enough on your own property, your neighbors are usually happy to contribute. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| Every couple of years, local tree companies deliver a truck load, about 16 cu yards, of wood chips to my driveway. Freshly cut and shredded tree trunks, branches and leaves. FREE. In my area, the tree companies advertise such opportunities on Craigslist. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| We don;t got many trees around here. I have seen free mulch before on craigslist but by the time I inquired about it, it was all gone. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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Best and cheapest are terms that should be used together more often since the best mulch to use is what you can get cheapest. While leaves, if available, may be free shredded often requires you to spoend money on machines and fuel to do that as well as your time and energy. Lacking trees to get leaves from may well also mean there are not many trees to chip up to create wood chip mulch, so your options are even more limited. It may be that the only source of mulch available is what a garden shop has in bags.
Straw, hay, grass clippings, almost any yard waste can be used for mulch where they are available. In the more arid areas of the world stones can be used, although they do not provide anything in the way of organic matter to the soil. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| Newspaper also works (shredded or otherwise). I usually use the newspaper the same way I would use weed blocking landscaping fabric. I also typically cover with shredded leaves. By the end of the growing season, it's pretty much broken down and easily worked back in to the soil. On tip when working with newspaper. Might want to moisten it so it doesn't blow away. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| Compost made yourself, applied over shredded newspaper works well. In my vegetable garden I often use grass clippings. For the perennial beds and around trees, we are in the process of harvesting the dead cholla cactus skeletons which we then pound with a sledge hammer in the wheelbarrow and it is again, free. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| Newspaper or cardboard can be used to supplement the mulch material you do have. Laid down on soil the newspaper or cardboard keeps any plants covered from getting the sunlight they need to grow so they don't. Shredding that paper can allow sunlight through, just as spreading less than 2 inches of any muldh material can. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| It is certainly going to vary by region so there is no single answer (in case the various answers above didn't already tell you that :-) Power companies also have tree trimming crews, either their own or contractors. Call your electric utility and ask them about it. Ours will sometimes dump a load for customers, and they have a pile at their facility you can scoop off of any time for free. YMMV. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| If woodchips and leaves are out, do you have any significant agriculture or food processing near you? Chaff, corn cobs, plant stems, etc. might be an option. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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I buy from the city land fill. They grid organics and compost it. 8 cubic yards will run me about $26.00.
After a good rain the composted material filters to the bottom leaving the larger wood chips on top. |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| I second novasapes suggestion about city landfills. the city landfill nearest me charges people to drop off tree limbs and such and then gives the mulch away for free. I hadn't thought about digging to the bottom of the pile for the composted material... i always backed my truck up to the pile and went for the easy stuff (I'll try going for the composted stuff next time). |
RE: WHat is the best and chepeast mulch?
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| In the Aug/Sept 2011 issue of Organic Gardening magazine is an article about crimping cover/green manure crops to use as mulch that might be of some use where other materiasl are not readily available. |
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