Maintaining a garden can be a lot of work! Weeding, watering, and fertilizing for 3-4 months requires weekly hands on work. I try to work smarter, not harder so my method of gardening incorporates many facets into one task, mulching. I’m not talking about using landscape fabric. Using fabric is great at keeping the weeds out but it also causes soil compaction while eliminating healthy bugs like worms and nutrients you get from composting organic materials.
I like to mulch with things like newspaper, cardboard, grass clipings, and leaves. All of these items become compost food for worms. The worms break them down which then provides nutrients for the plants and improves the soil. As a surface barrier the mulch is holding in moisture (so less watering needed) and detering weed growth. Best of all, at the end of the harvest season it can be tilled into the soil right along with the dead garden plants. This is eliminates the need to add fertilizer. Bonus feature, these items are free!
This is how I build my mulch layer. Row crops like tomatoes and onions get surrounded by a layer of cardboard then topped with heaping piles of grass. The cardboard suppresses weeds, holds in moisture while the grass keeps the cardboard from blowing away. Make sure the cardboard is free of colored ink and wax coating. I use shredded newspaper for crops that aren’t in nice rows, like my strawberry patch. You can sprinkle the shredded paper around individual plants and top with grass. Newspapers should also be the basic black ink, avoid the colored ad inserts.
I also use other things for mulch like the leaves of rhubarb. They are huge! Plus you can tear the leaves to make it easier to wrap them around plant stems. Don’t worry, they may be poisonous to eat but they are perfectly fine to use as compost or mulch. In the Fall I will rake leaves from the surrounding trees to help cover the garden for the winter and come Spring what’s left will get tilled into the soil. This whole process is an organic way of gardening. I don’t need to add fertilizer and the organic items I’ve added to the soil also help to maintain moisture. This is working smarter, not harder plus I’m feeding the family food that is free from chemicals.
Liz Walker Real Estate 