Tag Archives: mulch

10 Hot Ideas for a Drought-Resistant Garden

Cutting back on water doesn?t mean the end of your garden. You can take many steps to reduce the water needs of your yard without sacrificing beauty or practicality. Try some of these suggestions to make your garden more resilient in the face of drought and summer heat.

1. Prepare your soil appropriately.

Organic matter helps your soil retain water as well as supplying nutrition for your plants. It?s best to mix compost, manure, shredded leaves, lawn clippings or other organic materials into your soil before you plant anything.

An exception to this rule is when you?re planting plants that are native to desert areas. Cacti, succulents, agaves and similar plants have adapted to living in dry soils, which are typically low in nutrients. You don?t need to add any extra organic matter for these plants, using regular topsoil is fine.

2. Install permeable surfaces.

Pathways and driveways made from materials like pebbles, bark chips or irregular stones will allow rainfall to pass through and absorb into your ground. Whereas, solid cement or pavement surfaces often direct extra rainwater onto the street instead of capturing it on your property.

3. Choose water-wise plants.

You don?t have to limit yourself when deciding what to plant in your garden. Many modern hybrids and varieties of plants are bred to be drought-resistant.

Using plants native to your area is another great option. These will already be well-adapted to your local climate and able to withstand water fluctuations.

The Okanagan Xeriscape Association has an excellent plant database of many different drought-resistant annual and perennial flowers, as well as shrubs and trees. You can also ask your local garden center for recommendations.

Related: Best Drought-Resistant Plants for Your Garden

4. Reduce or remove your lawn.

Watering the lawn uses about 50 to 75 percent of a home?s water use during the summer. And this is usually treated, drinkable water. You could significantly reduce your water costs and conserve this precious resource by simply removing unneeded areas of lawn, or cutting it out altogether.

If you use your lawn as an area for recreation, consider putting in synthetic lawn or other material that doesn?t require water. There are also alternative groundcovers that can handle some foot traffic and need less water, such as thyme, clover, creeping Jenny, yarrow or chamomile.

5. Cover your ground.

Exposed soil will lose more water to evaporation than soil covered in some way. Groundcover plants, rocks, wood chips or other mulches add an attractive layer over your soil and keep in moisture.

Related: Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?

6. Provide shade.

An extra layer of protection overtop your garden will block the sun and reduce evaporation from the ground. Structures, like arbors, raised decks, gazebos and pergolas, can all provide needed shade for plants and animals.

Planting drought-tolerant trees and shrubs is another great option. Ginkgo, red maple, hawthorn, honey locust and western redbud are all trees that can handle limited water. Hardy bushes include butterfly bush, lilac, rose of Sharon, holly, forsythia and sumac.

7. Water selectively.

When you?re planning or rearranging your garden, always try to group plants according to their watering needs. For example, vegetables or fruit trees need adequate water to develop their crops. You can easily group these together in one area of your garden, leaving the other areas to more water-wise plantings and pathways.

An automatic watering system can also be helpful. You can design the system to deliver water exactly where it?s needed and nowhere else. An automatic system can also prevent overwatering. These guidelines can help determine how much to water your plants.

8. Collect rain water.

Rain water can be collected in anything from a bucket to an underground cistern. Regardless of the amount, saved water can be put to use around your garden and will help reduce your water bills.

You can also design your garden to passively collect rainwater. Try placing plants at the bottoms of your eavestroughs or next to rocks and pavers to catch the runoff.

Related: 10 Uses for Rainwater

9. Weed your garden.

Weeds take precious water away from the plants you want to grow. Weeds are much easier to remove when they?re small, so short patrols of your yard to remove weed seedlings on a regular basis are actually more efficient than putting off weeding until it becomes a large project.

10. Build raised beds.

Certain types of raised beds are excellent for retaining water despite being more exposed to the elements.

Keyhole beds are typically circular, raised beds with a composting tube through the middle and a notch in the side. They look like keyholes when viewed from above. Keyhole beds were developed by a humanitarian aid organization in southern Africa, where they were proven to effectively grow food crops in their unforgiving climate.

H?gelkultur is a style of making raised beds filled with decomposing wood. The wood provides long-term organic matter and nutrients to the plants planted overtop. It also stores water. RichSoil has detailed instructions on how to build a h?gelkultur bed.

Related
How to Create a Wildflower Garden
Best Annual Flowers That Bloom All Season
9 Mistakes to Avoid When Planting a New Vegetable Garden
20 Ways to Conserve Water at Home

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Read article here:

10 Hot Ideas for a Drought-Resistant Garden

Posted in ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, oven, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 10 Hot Ideas for a Drought-Resistant Garden

Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?

Next time youre in nature, try looking at the ground. Its usually covered in old leaves, fallen branches, rocks and other debris. This layer is vital for soil health. It helps regulate moisture, provides nutrients, suppresses weeds, prevents erosion and supports resident microbes and insects.

You can recreate this effect by mulching any bare areas in your garden. Mulch is essentially anything that covers your soil. And its meant to stay on top of soil as a buffer, not to be dug in like compost or fertilizer. Organic types of mulch will break down and release nutrients over time, but keep them on the soil surface for the most benefit.

There are many different types of mulch you can use. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on your site. These are some of the most common mulches available.

Wood Chips and Shredded Bark

Wood chips are primarily branches and wood fiber cut into small pieces. Whereas, shredded bark is only bark with no wood pulp. Both make excellent mulch in areas youd like to keep clean, such as under strawberries or other low-growing crops. You can also use them in pathways or around perennial plantings.

Wood chips retain water better and break down faster than shredded bark. This means that chips may be a better choice in areas like a vegetable garden where you want more moisture and nutrients. Bark may do better in long-term areas where you want better drainage, such as underneath shrubs.

Rocks

Covering the soil with large rocks counts as mulch. Rock gardens may look dry, but the moisture stored under rocks helps sustain the surrounding plants.

Rocks will also capture heat from the sun and create warm microclimates around them, which can be very helpful in cooler regions. Rocks can also prevent erosion when used on a slope.

Yard Debris

Dont be too quick to clean up your yard. Lawn clippings can be left on the lawn to compost in place, or gathered and spread over your garden beds. You can do the same with any plant trimmings, especially leafy greens from vegetables or flowering plants. These can be left next to the plants to cover the soil and allow the nutrients to be recycled.

Fall leaves are a great opportunity to add extra organic matter to your beds. They also help keep the soil warm and safe over winter.

If you have your own compost pile, your finished compost can be used as mulch. Depending on how rich your compost is, you may want to spread a small amount throughout your garden and then cover it with a less nutritious mulch like dried leaves.

Gravel or Pebbles

These small stones are typically used for pathways or driveways. Unlike pavement or cement, they allow water to pass through to the soil underneath. Like larger rocks, gravel and pebbles will absorb heat during the day and release it at night.

Its best to contain gravel or pebbles within a frame or solid edging material. They often scatter into your garden beds or lawn if theyre left loose. This is annoying for bed maintenance, and can be a hazard if your lawnmower catches and throws loose gravel.

Wine Cork Mulch

Almost 13 billion wine corks are produced worldwide every year. Unfortunately, many of these end up in landfills. A much better use for corks is to repurpose them as mulch.

Wine corks are a natural material made from bark of the cork oat tree, native to the Mediterranean. Corks are dried and compressed to be water resistant, so they need to be broken into smaller pieces to make a good mulch. These are full instructions on how to make your own wine cork mulch.

Newspaper

Mulching is a great way to reuse newspaper. Newspaper blocks sunlight from reaching the soil, so its excellent for controlling weeds. These are some helpful tips on how to use newspaper mulch in your garden.

Newspapers that are only printed with black ink are safe to use. The black ink contains a carbon-based compound thats biodegradable. On the other hand, colored inks may contain harmful metals or other compounds, such as lead or sulfur. Not all inks are harmful, but its hard to know exactly whats in each one. Its best to avoid any colored flyers and inserts from your newspapers.

Straw

Straw is the dry stalks left-over from grain crops after the grains have been harvested. Not to be confused with hay, which is usually a mix of grasses, legumes and other plants that are grown to feed to animals. Hay includes all the seeds from these plants, which would create a huge weed problem if you used it as mulch.

Straw will have less seeds in it than hay, although some of the grain and other possible weed seeds will be present. Its good organic matter and will provide lots of carbon to your soil as it breaks down.

Although, avoid using straw if you have any rodents on your property. Rodents like mice, voles or rats love nesting in straw and will make homes in your mulch.

Landscape Fabrics

The most common landscape fabric is made from woven polypropylene, which is a type of plastic. Its typically laid directly on top of soil. The fact its woven allows water to go through the fabric while providing a solid barrier to prevent weed growth. You can cut individual holes in the fabric where you want to plant shrubs, trees or other plants.

Other mulches can be put on top of the fabric to make it look better, such as bark mulch or gravel. Although, weeds often take root in between the mulch and the fabric as the fabric breaks down over time. These weeds can be difficult to remove in older landscapes as they become entangled in the fabric.

Synthetic Lawns

Many mulches are good in garden beds, but what if you have an area you want to keep open for recreation or other uses? Thats where synthetic lawns work well. They dont require the water and maintenance of a real grass lawn, and they still provide the benefit of protecting your soil.

A synthetic or artificial lawn is made from different types of plastic materials to create a mat that looks and feels like real grass. It can be shaped to fit any area you need to fill.

Living Mulch

If you have a bare edge in your garden, try planting something low-growing to fill the space. Perennials like thyme, sedum, rock cress, snow in summer or candytuft can make excellent ground covers that will return every year. Annuals like alyssum, lobelia, begonia, bacopa or petunias will bloom all season as well as cover your soil.

Related
10 Bee-Friendly Plants That are Easy to Grow
9 Beneficial Bugs & Insects to Welcome in the Garden
12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Visit link: 

Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, oven, PUR, Uncategorized, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?