mulch: keeps water in / keeps water OUT

paco2000

14 years ago

I have found no info on this, an issue which troubles me. I garden (personally and professionally) where water is scarce. I use drip, and I use mulch. The two together are a great combination (provided you don't pierce the tubing under the mulch with a tool- " to cultivate or not to cultivate" being another issue)

However, where conventional spray irrigation is in use- it seems the mulch will insulate the soil from the water as well as it keeps the moisture in the soil from evaporating out. The result being that one would have to spray a whole lot more water onto the mulch to facilitate it soaking through into the soil. In this situation the only mulch that seems it might be better adapted would be large gravel (and then we are back to: "to cultivate or not to cultivate")

I look forward to suggestions

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Comments (3)

lehua49
14 years ago
Hi paco,

I have read discussions on this topic on the "Soil, Compost and Mulch" Forum. They were very detailed and opinionated about your question. JMHO, not all mulch deflects water. If there is not too much water, I would just make the place I want the water to migrate to low. Aloha
fairview
14 years ago
Yup, you are correct. With overhead spray it took nearly ten minutes to get water to the soil which is why I am now running drip tube. Of course I have the recommended 2-3 inches of mulch after the fluff goes away. It is very much a real problem. When I used shredded cypress mulch it seemed to be the worse. All those shreds interlocked. The shredded hardwood doesn't seem that bad.

This week we had about a 1/2 of rainfall after none for nearly a month or more with none. due to the fact that I am a habitual procrastinator the 1QT container with that dead plant was still sitting on my patio. On a lark I turned it upside down and saw that less than the top one third was moist. I scratched the mulch away in the landscape and it was dusty in places where here is no drip tube. 1/2" rain all in the mulch.

All organic products are going to act like a sponge to some degree or another. Inorganic would solve that problem but the choices are limited, not aesthetic pleasing (IMO, perhaps toxic long term (shredded tires)or not conducive to creating a healthy environment at the soil surface interface.

In my one bed I have 300' looped every 18" approx of tube installed. I had it set for 3 hours. 900 gallons of water completely and totally flooded the area to include some ponding. That's a pretty large area. I've reduced it to 2.5 and finally to 2. 600 gallons totally saturates the area.
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dirty_wench
14 years ago
Yes, mulch is a double-edged sword when it comes to irrigation, isn't it? I've found no real solutions to the problem. However, if I loosen the mulch around my plants with a pitchfork helps to allow the water to penetrate to the plant roots. It is cumbersome, yes, but I don't know what else to do.