How to Find Free Mulch For Your Garden

I’m pretty sure that if you are reading this, you have used some form of mulch during your gardening experience. However, maybe you didn’t know that there are many options for free mulch for your homestead garden that you can explore.

These days, many gardeners are discovering new sources of free mulch that have been there all along; an untapped resource. These include clippings from a lawn, or woody prunings from other plants in your yard. You will be surprised by how beneficial all these things can be, and how often the opportunity arises to use them.

Grass Clippings

Many gardeners have taken to spreading out their excess grass clippings across the rest of their yard. You may think this will look tacky, with big piles of grass just sitting in your yard as if you were too lazy to rake them up. However, if you spread them out enough then you won’t even be able to tell that there is an excess amount. Leaving the extra grass on the yard acts as a sort of mulch by preventing evaporation and weed growth. With this extra water, you won’t have to water nearly as much to keep your grass green.

If your garden is in more need of mulching than your yard, it is not unheard of to rake up all the grass and transport it to your garden. By making a small layer around the vicinity of the plant, you’ll apply all the same benefits from leaving it in your yard. My yard is rather green on its own, but I often have trouble with my plants staying green and healthy. So, rather than leave the grass clipping in my yard, I move them all around my plants. It is just a matter of choosing what your highest mulching priority is.

Branches and Twigs

Sometimes, our pruning activities will lead us to have an amazing amount of branches and twigs. If this is the case, you should consider renting a wood chipper to put all of those branches to use. After one day of intense pruning, you would be surprised at just how many branches you end up with. Rather than throw these away, you can turn them into a huge amount of mulch for your plants. However, if your pruning has not left you with that big of an amount, you should bundle it all up and save it to add onto the next batch. This is because the chipping machines can be slightly expensive to rent, and you want it to be absolutely worth it!

Free Bark Mulch

Bark mulch has become a little controversial over the last few years after the release of the film Back to Eden. Back to Eden is basically all about the benefits of mulch on a garden but what a lot of people failed to realize when they decided to use this method is that you can’t use freshly chipped bark mulch and it has to be fairly small in size. If you don’t let the mulch sit for awhile and compost down a little, it won’t have time to break down the green material that is in the freshly chipped material and it will use significant amounts of nitrogen within your soil to break it down. So, if you are using bark mulch, make sure it either sits in a pile in your own yard for a few months or that it isn’t super fresh bark mulch.

The best way we have found to get bark mulch is from a local tree service. We just talked to them about dropping it off in our driveway, instead of up the road at our local transfer station (it helps that we are just down the road from the transfer station 🙂 It saves them having to pay to get rid of it and it helps us receive free mulch in large quantities. Just be sure they aren’t trimming or mulching trees etc that have been sprayed with pesticides etc and that they don’t have non beneficial species in the mix.

Over time, all organic mulches need to be replenished. This is because they will naturally decompose in the conditions of your yard. Usually you can tell for yourself just by looking at it, but sometimes it can look perfectly regular but still have problems. If you start to notice any poor plant growth whatsoever, you should replace your mulch. Always keep in mind that during the process of decomposition, your mulch will use up the valuable nitrogen in the soil. Without this, the plants will be missing a key nutrient. There are several types of fertilizers available on the market that are specifically designed to deal with this problem.

The use of mulches in the yard and garden is something everyone should try. Not only can it save lots of time by reducing the amount of garbage you have to transport out, but it increases the healthiness and integrity of your plants by putting that so called garbage to good use. So if you think you would be able to save a good amount of branches and twigs for chipping, or if you think that you are ready to stop raking up all your grass clippings, then I think that mulching is for you.

Related Posts:

• 7 Factors Needed for a Good Compost
• What is Mulch and Why Do I Need It in My Garden?
• A Beginners Guide to Composting in Your Backyard
• Start Using Companion Planting in Your Homestead Garden

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