When determining which garden mulch or landscape mulch is best suited for your landscaping needs, there are many factors to consider. The argument can be understood by showing to you the standards of the different garden mulches.

Before we delve deeper, let’s try to answer a basic question a landscaping beginner would raise: Does mulch covering affect soil pH at all? More specifically, does any garden mulch lower soil pH, as many have long suspected?

The composition of your soil pH has a hefty impact on plant health. Many people have apprehensions, as I have, on how garden mulch selection impacts soil pH, since it really affects the loam when it decays. Does using pine needles in your landscape mulch lead to your garden soil withering away? What about garden mulch composed of oak leaves?

Many people have thought garden mulch has minor effect on soil pH. Such is the case, when your garden mulch is made up of oak leaves, it starts out acidic when its green, but decays more and more as an alkaline in the end. Moreover, based on what I’ve read, it is now believed pine that needles making up a garden mulch reduces the soil pH to inconsequential levels, if ever.

  With the concern of the reasonable influence of garden mulch at a distance, let’s take into consideration other things that relates to garden mulch options — some of which are calculable, others of which trimmed down to personal inclinations in landscaping. We would have to set things up clearly if only to make a decision, since a garden mulch can do well in one group  only to perform unsatisfactorily in another. Two obvious uses of garden mulch to which the reader will find little or no reference in this article are weed suppression and erosion control. They have not been included for a simple fact: a garden mulch done perfectly will eliminate weeds and erosion altogether.

These are the three parameters in our discussion.

    * “Insulation value in summer” is judged by the degree to which the garden mulch can keep the soil beneath cool and moist. A notable summer insulator will both lessen your need for watering and it guards the roots against severe heat.

    * The consideration of whether or not the garden mulch needs to be removed in spring is grounded in the fact that heavy organic garden mulches can smother emerging spring plants. This is obviously less of a factor, however, for plants that remain alive aboveground, throughout the winter. Though even the latter can benefit from having the loam around the roots warmed by the heat of the sun, a process simplified by momentarily removing the garden mulch. In the case of plastic sheet mulch, this factor is irrelevant, since holes are poked through the material to provide access for the plants.

    * “Nourishment and aeration afforded to underlying soil by decomposition” is one of the criteria used in the following pages to compare the various landscape mulches. However, do not be fooled by the word “nourishment” into thinking that compost and garden mulch are synonymous.

I have been a Calgary Landscaping Contractor for many years. We specialize in Calgary Gardens and Calgary Landscape Design.  These techniques work anywhere in the world as well as in my area.

Written by: Custom Stone and Waterscapes ‎3829 Parkhill Place SW, Calgary, AB T2S 2W6 (403) 870-1142 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (403) 870-1142