Through mulching you can affect the soil in your garden in different ways, depending on the choice of material. It is therefore important that you think beforehand about what you want to achieve by mulching your beds.
Why should you mulch beds and with what?
Mulching beds offers many benefits, such as protection against erosion, improved soil quality and plant growth, temperature regulation and weed control. Popular materials are grass clippings, bark mulch, pine bark or special mulching paper (€89.00 on Amazon).
Why should I mulch my beds?
Bare ground is not necessarily the most aesthetic sight, and it also causes the soil to be washed out and/or blown away by the wind. This does not happen with covered beds. At the same time, mulching improves the soil and protects it from the elements. The harvest quantity can be increased by mulching and the growth of your plants is stimulated.
The benefits of mulching:
- more aesthetic than “bare” floor
- prevents soil erosion
- improves soil quality
- stimulates plant growth
- keeps the soil moist
- has a temperature-balancing effect
- Increase in harvest quantity
- reduces weed growth
- protects plants from frost in winter
What can I use to mulch my beds?
Mulching with lawn clippings, pine bark or conventional bark mulch is quite common. Lawn clippings should dry a little before use and only be applied in one cut, otherwise there is a risk of mold. It is rich in nitrogen and potassium.
Bark mulch is often used to create easy-care beds. If it is of high quality, it smells pleasantly resinous. A sour or sulfurous smell indicates rot. You should no longer use this mulch as it could harm your plants. Red-brown pine bark mulch is ideal for creating garden paths.
Can I also mulch vegetable beds?
Vegetable beds can also be mulched, but choosing the right material is particularly important here. After flowering, strawberry fields are usually mulched with fresh, dry straw. It keeps snails away from the plants and largely prevents the strawberries from molding.
You can find special mulch paper in stores (€89.00 on Amazon). Made from cornstarch, it reduces the growth of weeds in your vegetable patch and increases the temperature in the soil. This increases the harvest yield, especially for heat-loving plants. After harvesting vegetables, you can simply compost the film.
Tip
The finer the mulch material is, the thinner you should apply it so that the soil can still breathe well.
