Using mulch in your garden is one of the very best ways to ensure success, especially if you’re growing vegetables. Mulch is inexpensive to use because most mulches are composed of organic materials that you can easily gather yourself, or which don’t cost much to purchase. Wherever you happen to live, city or suburb, north or south, mulch can make an enormous difference in both the quality and yield from any plants grown in your garden. Here are some of the advantages provided by mulch in gardening.
Benefits of using mulch in your garden
The single greatest benefit of using mulch in your garden is that it has tremendous capability for retaining water. Since water is so critical to the growth and yield of any flower or vegetable garden, the ability to retain water in the soil is essential, even more so in areas that receive limited rainfall, or where watering can be difficult.
By covering the surface area of a garden with a thin layer of mulch, evaporation of moisture in the soil is largely prevented, so that moisture stays in the soil where it’s needed. It has been demonstrated that without mulch, as much as 80% of ground moisture will evaporate, but with a thin covering of mulch, that figure drops to around 10%.
Mulch also has the effect of absorbing much of the direct sunlight of the day, so the soil beneath it is not heated as much as it would be without that protection. With soil staying cooler through the day, plants are not impacted as much by extremes of temperature, so their growth is not inhibited.
There are many different kinds of mulch, and most of them are very inexpensive and readily available for purchase at garden stores, and they are very easy to distribute over the surface area of your garden. With the great benefits they provide, the ease of use, and the low cost, there is really just no good reason to not use mulch in your garden.
Contact Rocky Mountain Compost for all of your mulch needs!
