Laine Berman

Mulch Madness

Following that workshop by Lonny Reid on soil amendments, I was obsessed with mulch. It seemed to be the most sensible, doable, natural, inexpensive, and just plan simple means of making my Florida sand useable. I needed mulch. I wanted mulch. I craved mulch. I dreamed about mulch! And I got it in massive steaming piles. But then I didn’t. I called local arborists to see if they could give me their mulch but not all arborists mulch the trees they cut. Some just pile logs and branches on a trailer and take them in large chunks to the dump.

Early on in my great adventure, I’d experimented with the meadow look in the rear corner of the backyard. It didn’t take long to realize this was not the way to go so I mowed it all and shoveled wagonloads of mulch and dumped it to cover the whole section. It changed everything! I kept adding more mulch as I got more ChipDrops. It expanded. I filled it in with lemongrass, seven blueberry bushes, several native flowering plants, rosemary, and that trellis in the pic I picked up at a church sale for the passion fruit vine. Everything that went in there, thrived. Mulch truly is magic!

I was doing so well with mulch that I figured to mulch the rest of the backyard. Raised beds were too expensive to buy and too hard to make by myself with found wood. From now on I would stick to in-ground planting. More mulch!

Rather than needing to mow or weed whack around the beds, I mulched. Over time, almost the entire backyard was covered in at least 10 inches of mulch. Did it stop the weed growth? Of course not! Weeds grew through it along the edges and weeds grow on top of it. Now, I can pretty much plant anywhere in ground in the back yard because of the mulch converting that sand to dark, rich soil. This is not a permanent fix, however. The soil needs to be fed and periodically I add more mulch and dried leaves picked out of people’s trash, and whatever else has grown and died in the garden. Chop and drop anything. Or so I thought.

One learns by trial and error what can be used and what cannot. Do not pull out surinam spinach and think you can just leave it anywhere to decompose. It will most definitely regrow itself. I naively thought if I cut a plant down before its seeds are fully formed, they will not reproduce. This is not always the case. Mexican sunflower will grow anywhere anytime, especially where you don’t want it.

My food production was coming right along and now that most of the yard had been mulched over for a year, I could now plant almost anywhere and get a decent crop. Life was good! Now what was I going to do? Plant more and different crops! Learn about seasonal changes and what grows best in cooler and hotter weather.

When the winter looked to be about to end, it was time to clean out the beds and start preparing for my spring and summer crops. But I was out of mulch. In the heat of the season, mulch would retain moisture and protect my plants from burning up. I simply cannot get by without mulch.

Finally after signing onto ChipDrop several times over and getting no deliveries, I asked Lonny Reid to set me up with one of his suppliers of free mulch. Within a week, on Christmas eve, I was given a small load of fresh wood chips. I was thrilled and thanked Anthony profusely for this best of all possible Christmas prezzies (my only present actually), thinking, “I need to give them some money or something so they come back.” But just as I ran inside to fetch my purse, I remembered I had some roselle crumbles baking in the oven. By the time I took them out, Anthony had gone.

I was upset about not giving him a tip or at least something harvested from the garden. I panicked. Oh no!! They won’t come back now, I thought. I texted Anthony stating I had something for them whenever they could get back this way. They didn’t come back. After all, I most definitely wanted them to come back! I couldn’t do anything without mulch! That week, however, the city had hired arborists to trim trees around electric and other utility wires. Right on my street was a crew cutting away at the oak trees, which were then fed into a mulcher in the back of their truck. I walked over and asked if there was a chance I could get that mulch dropped on my front yard. They said yes and I was thrilled by the chance to get another load of mulch. I took a few of the smaller logs they had just cut to use as boarders. Then I bagged a bunch of sweet potatoes to give the crew in exchange for the mulch. When they were about to leave, I asked when they’d drop the mulch here. One of the crew said they would drop it here once the truck was full at around 2 that afternoon. That afternoon and for the next week, I waited anxiously for the mulch that never came. My own personal Godot, my nonexistent savior, never to show its gleaming, palm scented face.

About a week later, I had barely touched the first pile when Anthony suddenly showed up unexpectedly with a load. Boy was I happy to see him! He warned me it was a full truckload. OK, put it along the front section but pull well up onto the lawn. I figured it would be closer to the rear garden gate. A full truckload, however, was way more than I could ever imagine, never mind use in the backyard. Blast! It was time to cultivate the front lawn, something I’d been putting off since I first began this gardening adventure two years ago. I was overwhelmed wondering what to do with so much mulch! When Anthony said he could return in a few days with more, I replied, “No! This will keep me busy for a long time! Thank you!”

This massive pile required some deep thought and even, gulp, planning! While in bed thinking about how I never design, plan, or organize my garden, it suddenly hit me to move all the raised bed structures and use the bricks to contain the mulch and keep the edges clean. That first ever kidney shaped bed I was so proud of with those red retaining wall bricks no longer needed to be retained as I would now mulch across the lawn right up to it. Even the tiled, granite walkway would need to be moved! Oh crikey! Moving yet another walkway!

I was up early that morning all gung ho to start reconfiguring my front yard. I was well on my way to eliminating the lawn! Luckily this was February and the weather was cool enough to put in long hours. Moving a mulch pile is not as easy as you may think. This is fresh mulch, not processed and dried. It contains whatever plants had just been removed: oak, palm, cherry laurel, whatever. Palm fronds are a major nuisance to shovel up and the mulch will be in every possible size with twigs and branches thrown in for good measure. Oh and fresh mulch is damp; it gives off heat and smoke as well as mold, dust and maybe bugs too. At first it can be easily shoveled into the wagon and moved to the edges of the area to be covered – an area already layered with cardboard. If the mulch was thick enough, I probably didn’t need to use cardboard. I did anyway not wanting to repeat past mistakes. Since the pile was vast, as was the area to be covered, I thought just raking would be simpler. It wasn’t. Consistency was a mess with lots of twigs, and especially the palm fronds make moving it really difficult. I needed to frequently grab huge handfuls and yank out the fronds, toss them aside, and hope for mainly wood chips again. As huge as the pile was, I had it flattened in three days. The pics below show the original design before the latest delivery, the reconfigured beds, the mulch moving process, and finally the new walkway as a boarder for the mulch. I seem to have a penchant for creating walkways to nowhere. I kept the day lily circle for aesthetic purposes – but added a bunch of goldenrod seeds inside it. The bottom corner beside the front door path remains as grass. I might try planting sunshine mimosa there – who knows? No rush. I have a lifetime to figure it out!

I texted Anthony for more mulch!

He was back in another week with a smaller load, surprised that I needed more already. Frankly, so was I! The new load, I figured would go toward expanding the east side of my front yard. My initial thoughts were to mulch the street-side and plant trees the house-side. But then, I remembered when Lonny came to install my irrigation system, he needed to shut off the water to the house from the main water meter. I had mulched right over it. Not wanting to admit what a stupid thing I’d done, I figured I would find it and dig it out. How the heck can I find it now under at least 12 inches of packed mulch? Between comparing possible locations from the mirror image house across the street, guess work, and digging up many square feet of packed mulch, I almost found it. When Lonny came in the morning, I had to admit I’d lost my main water valve. Through some kind of divining magic, Lonny found it quickly. I had shoveled within centimeters of it.

Before I started planting, I figured I should find out exactly where my water pipes and sewage lines are. Such horror stories I have heard about tree roots breaking through water or sewage pipes and the repair costs to the homeowner!

More to follow!