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How to mulch your garden

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Learning how to mulch your garden is really simple. If you search online you’ll find many tips, tricks and ways but over time I’ve learned that I’m a lazy gardener. The lazy way of mulching is sheet mulching. I want the most benefit for the least amount of effort. Anyone who gardens around Austin, Texas knows what we’re up against climate wise, geographically and rich alluvial soil isn’t on the agenda. Mulch helps you build soil and building soil is what organic gardeners do.

After a long hot summer this is what my garden looked like.

Supplies you’ll need:
1) Mulch..preferably truck loads of it.
2) Cardboard. No gloss, just brown or white paper that’ll decay
3) Pitchfork and wheelbarrow

This style of mulching applies to various gardens including ornamental plants but I use wood mulch for paths in my garden. Currently my focus is on edibles and I find that wood mulch and cardboard is the easiest way to take care of weeds, build soil long term and as the mulch decays it just makes better soil to be brief. You put down cardboard to smother bermuda grass. We all love bermuda grass as Austin gardeners right? Blech! The stuff is pernicious. Stop weeding it and start smothering it. It’s harder working than we are but it’s definitely not as smart.

So you put down cardboard and cover it completely with mulch 3-6″ deep. If at a later date you have more weeds you can spot mulch. In summer things are dry and hot and I do little gardening. The result is that after two years my garden is full of weeds but have no fear, you can do the same to your garden bed by weedeating heavily, putting down several layers of newspaper and putting compost on top 3″ or more deep. Same style, different result. You can plant directly in the compost. Over time both of these methods, for the paths and the garden, will keep you cool and gardening.

So how does this relate to back pain, spine care and a good life? Mulch provides cushion, meaning less impact, particularly on your lumbar spine. Masanobu Fukuoka used to become frustrated that farmers wouldn’t walk barefoot in their fields to feel the soil underneath them. Create better gardens, create better spines.

Okra…isn’t so bad, looking at least.

Compost happens

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Our lawnmower has been finicky and I’ve used a drill, plyers, turning it to get the air bubble out of the way, taking the top off and trying to repair the spring to crank and taking the crank casing off and wrapping a cord manually to get it to run. This has all been with limited success. I’m good at preparing a meal, good with back pain and yoga/bodywork but when it comes to small engine repair, I’m still learning.

Patience in this area doesn’t come easy for me and the second day after another section of the yard was mowed I knew it was time to rest. I pulled the lanwmower aside, considered my job well done and while chatting with my friend who’s in town, grabbed the pitchfork, wheelbarrow and bags of leaf mold. Time to mulch the garden beds.

The onions need a heavy mulching as they sit in the ground and the bed is round making it more difficult to get to the center. I pulled up a bag or two of leaves that are riddled with holes and earthworms were eating through the leaves and organic matter. Into the wheelbarrow they went, an old bale of hay tossed on top and away we go.

Last summer was rough, I almost wanted to give up gardening. My redworms died in the heat and I decided to let the garden sit fallow. No use in struggle or fight, nature will do what it does.

This spring the garden is extremely productive. Sugar snap peas, radishes, mustard and turnip greens and swiss chard are all plentiful with more things planted and coming along. Heat will be here before long but I’ve learned not to fight, just go with. By that time most of the garden will be southern peas, yard long beans, okra and malabar spinach. No use in struggle.

Planning, preparation and building soil takes time. I’ve harvested leaves, made compost, hauled wood mulch and keep working on things season after season. Over time you see the soil fertility build, seeds sprout more easily and plants grow stronger and faster. All that from a suburban lot that used to be just grass.

Plant seeds where your bliss lay and watch them grow.

Remember: compost happens.

Rhythms in nature

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I’ve been gardening for years now and still know nothing. Patience is acquired in gardening through the slow process of whittling away the unnecessary much like your yoga practice.

 

Over time I start seeds in trays and get a 50% hit or miss ratio on sprouting and transplanting.

 

 

 

 

Direct seeding has been even more topsy turvy and I’d say I’ve got a 20% success rate. Some of my seed was getting old in the fall so I decided to just plant it directly and let nature take its course. I watered for several weeks and nothing sprouted. Oh well, live and learn. The planting guides for our area I’ve decided are written by trolls with a sense of humor.

 

 

We had lots of rain and then in the middle of winter, things sprout. Alright…just let the rhythm do what it does. You’re the reminder nature. Start where you are, grow your roots. Indeed.