Mulching is an activity that involves covering the soil with an organic or inorganic product to improve the conditions of the soil. Improving the soil condition ensures that you have healthy crops in your garden.
So, whether you have an indoor or outdoor garden, mulching can be an added advantage to your crop growth. Most people don’t know that, but it has more benefits to the plants and soil than you know.
The Importance of Mulching in your garden.
Let’s talk about the importance of mulching in your garden.
Weed Control
As you know, a weed is a plant that grows in unwanted areas. They grow when you have fertile soil, which is the best soil for your plants. As a result, weeds and plants start to fight for nutrients.
Placing mulch around the plant is the best way to stop weeds from growing. By doing this, you keep them away from the sun, and they can’t make their food thus, they die in their early stages of growth.
Even though mulch improves the nutrients in the soil, weeds can’t grow if they can’t make their food through photosynthesis which requires the sun.
Moisture Conservation
Whether you use organic or inorganic mulch, you must consider moisture conservation. It’s one of the important roles of mulching.
Moisture involves water droplets that evaporate from the soil into the atmosphere. Through mulching, you can prevent this moisture from evaporating as the mulch will condense the moisture into small droplets that will later fall back into the soil as droplets.
Plastic mulch is the best for moisture conservation. You can save water between two irrigations. This is the best way to save water used for irrigation in dry areas.
Improves Soil Nutrients
Another advantage of using mulch is that it adds nutrition to the soil. Some materials tend to decompose over time. As a result, they create microorganisms and Fungi, which are important to the soil in creating nutrients.
However, other materials like wood and stalk take time to decompose, which is a problem because they use more nitrogen.
Prevents Soil Erosion
Soil erosion is common in areas with heavy rainfall or hilly places. Most people have found a way to prevent soil erosion by using mulch.
To prevent soil erosion using mulch, you can use plastic mulch to intercept raindrops. Drops of rain hit the soil and remove small portions of soil till they erode fertile soil. They might seem small, but these drops have the intensity of dispersing soil in one drop.
For hilly or not flat areas, the best way to mulch is to place the product horizontally through the whole garden while leaving spaces between the horizontal lines. You can use grass, stalks, wood chips, or leaves. This is a way of redirecting the waterway.
It Reduces Root Damage
Root damage occurs when you are inter-cultivating. But you can prevent that with a clean and free weed garden. Once you suppress the growth of weeds, then the garden will be clean, and you won’t have to cultivate mid-season, which can result in damaging roots.
Problems For Poor Mulching
Mulching is good for the soil and plants if applied correctly. However, if you misuse it, then it can cause harm to your plants. You should place your mulch to a depth of two to four inches.
Organic mulch decomposes over time, and if it decomposes slower than the reapplication period, it could cause a mulch build-up because of the added extra mulch h. Build-up means more depth of mulch. Depth is important in removing weeds, but it has other problems that come with it.
Here are the problems with mulching:
- Deep mulching increases the amount of moisture that is retained in the soil. Excess moisture can cause stress to the roots, which causes them to rot.
- If you apply too much mulch to the stem of a plant, it causes stress to the stem tissues, which results in pests and diseases on the stem.
- Mulch can alter the pH of the soil and, as a result, cause a build-up to high toxic levels that the plant can’t handle.
- It can attract rodents that make them eat the stems.
- If you misuse mulch, it can reduce water and air penetration into the soil. Lack of water and air can result in stunted or poor growth.
