Why Mulch Is Important To Your Landscaping Success
Spring is the ideal time to plan for that perfectly beautiful, yet functional landscape. One of the first items on that planning checklist should be mulching.
Why mulch?
Mulch is like magic. Not only does it give your lawn a clean finished look, but it is also very beneficial to plants and soil. Mulch covers the soil to prevent moisture loss, promotes the growth of beneficial micro-organisms in the soil and improves your soil quality.
Aesthetic appeal
Adding mulch to your garden will raise the overall aesthetic appeal of your landscape. Without mulch, your garden might look disorganized and arbitrarily constructed. Mulching will make your garden appear cohesive, intentional, and fresh. By adding some mulch to your most prized plants, you can emphasize the best features of your garden.
At JK Enterprise, we offer a variety of colored-enhanced mulches that you can pick and choose from to find what color will work best in your garden. Before you began constructing your garden, you may have had a visual image of your dream garden. Colored-enhanced mulch can help make that dream into reality by creating an interesting and visually stimulating emphasis on your most beautiful plants. If you have a set of colorful and vibrant plants, a darker mulch will help those colors stand out and leave your neighbors speechless when they see your beautifully manicured and professional garden.
Mulch can also act as an intermediate boundary between the artificial and natural elements of your landscape. If you have stone or concrete footpaths adjacent to your garden, a layer of mulch can create a seemingly effortless transition from artificial to natural. This creates a natural flow within your landscape and will contribute to your landscape’s aesthetic appeal. Mulch will also help prevent the emergence of weeds surrounding your footpaths as mulch deters weed growth.
Decorative plants love mulch!
A good layer of mulch around your plants properly insulates and protects them during extreme weather by retaining moisture in the soil during summer heat, warming your soil in winter months, and reducing soil erosion during heavy rainfall.
Mulch will especially help during the coldest winter months and the hottest summer months. In the winter, mulch will protect your plant roots from freezing which will help them remain sustainable so that they can sprout anew in the spring. During the summer, mulch will give your garden shade and help prevent evaporation.
Trees and shrubs aren’t in their natural environments when they are part of your landscape. In their own environments, trees and shrubs gain nutrients from the decomposition of plant materials that have died around them. In the landscaped area, dead plant materials are removed and the grass competes with the trees and shrubs for the remaining nutrients. Mulching significantly improves the health of trees and shrubs.
Keep those nasty weeds away!
Mulch helps suppress the worst nightmare of any gardener: weed growth! Putting a layer of mulch down will suffocate the weeds that are in your garden by blocking any sunlight coming in, and mulch will also prevent weeds from getting the nutrients they need to survive. So, not only does mulch raise the appearance of your garden and keep your plants healthy, but it will also keep weeds away.
Weeds that have begun to germinate in your garden desperately need sunlight to grow, and mulch will block them from the sunlight and disallow them to thrive. If you already have weeds in your garden, you should do your best to get rid of them immediately because weeds tend to spread in the same way that a virus does. Mulch helps slow the virus of weeds by obstructing them from emerging in new areas and taking control of your plants.
Weed seeds tend to travel to your garden through the wind where they land in your soil and begin to emerge. Adding a 3-inch layer of mulch will prevent weed seeds from landing and growing in your soil. In other words, mulch acts as a barrier to keep weed seeds out of your garden and out of your mind.
For the strongest and most resistant of weeds, you can use a layer approach to help rid your garden of those strong weeds. To do this, you must first take all of the soil out of the infected area and replace it with an initial layer of herbicide granules. After this, you should place a layer of wood chips over the area which will act as a long-lasting and protective barrier. Lastly, place down a heavier mulch, such as hardwood leaf mulch which will keep everything in place. After each season, you should replays the top layer of heavy mulch because it will gradually decompose. The wood chips take time to decompose, usually several years. This method will eliminate the emergence of weeds for years to come so that you can put your mind at rest for fear of weeds taking over.
There are so many beautiful options when it comes to mulching. Most all wood and bark mulch serve approximately the same purpose, the choice is usually dependent upon appearance and cost. JK Enterprise Landscaping Supply offers a broad selection of mulch materials, colors and sizes. All of our mulches are made locally, here in Virginia. Give us a call, we’d love to share our ideas and specials with you!
Moisture retention
Perhaps the most important factor that mulch provides is moisture retention which helps your plants grow and survive more than any other factor. Mulch will protect your plants from wind and sunlight which contribute to the evaporation and erosion of your topsoil.
If you use a drip irrigation system or a soaker hose, covering your system with mulch will give you complete control over knowing how much moisture you are giving your crops. Additionally, mulch covers up your irrigation system which protects said system from people walking around the area, wind and UV rays, and any other meteorological elements that may be present within your landscape. By covering up your irrigation system, you can also raise the aesthetic appeal of your landscape as such systems can be an eye-sore.
In conclusion
The most important aspect of any garden is to have healthy soil, and mulch can make your soil all the healthier by adding organic matter and nutrients which will improve the overall strength of the ecosystem that exists within your soil. Mulch will also protect your layer of topsoil from evaporation which will, in turn, prevent your topsoil from eroding. Without a layer of mulch insulating your topsoil from the sun, your topsoil is much more likely to harden into a crusted exterior which will make it harder for water to integrate into your soil.
It is true that using mulch has many practical benefits that will help your garden prosper, but it will also raise the overall aesthetic appeal of your landscape!
