Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I love the smell of leafmold, a reaction I acknowledge is not shared by all. Luckily, I have the kind of neighbors who wouldn’t complain even if the smell drove them indoors, p
ossibly because they know it’s the secret to the health of my garden. Anyway, that’s what I’d say in the mulch’s defense.
This pile was originally 7 cubic yards, dumped in my driveway by my town’s Public Works Department. Last year I finally started enlisting help in spreading it around my hilly garden. No, I didn’t actually let anyone else step into my borders to put the mulch down - do I look demented? Rather, I cleaned up the borders in preparation and then hired a very nice Guatemalan gentleman to pitchfork the stuff into containers and carry them to me for distribution. Here’s what’s left after working with Adolpho for 3 and a half hours, which is all I could stand. (I wish I could show you the mulch pile with Adolpho but when I asked if I could take a picture he looked terrified and I realized what a hopelessly naive gringo I am.)
Mulch and compost are HOT topics on the local gardening email groups and no wonder. For most of us, it’s the only ingredient we add to our gardens all year and our biggest single gardening project. And confusion abounds - maybe because a nearby town sells fine, fully decomposed compost and calls it mulch, which folks use as a mulch, creating the perfect growing condition for weeds. And may I add, at the risk of sounding fussy, that it looks like bare dirt?
Among those of us who know what mulch is there are arguments about which is best for the soil and whether city mulch is too acidic or contains weed seeds. And normally I’m the biggest defender of city mulch, which is collected from our curbs in the fall, then ground and left to decompose to varying degrees. This year, if you’ll indulge me a brief complaint, it’s a tad trashy for my taste. Not that I have anything against used condoms but hey, not among my tulips, please.
P.S. Sandy in B.C., tell me again how many yards of mulch you use where you work? I know you mentioned a number once and it made me feel a lot better about this onerous task.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Sandy 04.01.06 at 12:24 pm
Hi Susan,
I use about 12 yards in my garden and about 24+ at work. At the end I am pretty much sick of mulch! I am very picky about putting it in my garden though so no one can really help me:).
Takoma Gardener 04.01.06 at 4:05 pm
Sandy, that’s even more cubic yards than I remember and reading it makes me feel mulch better! Susan
Kathy Jentz 04.01.06 at 4:34 pm
I still have a couple yards of Takoma leaf mulch piled by my back fence left from last year - slowly spreading it around the beds over the past few weeks as I clean out the dead foliage and old leaves.
BTW you are right - this last batch seems ‘trashier’ than usual - lots of shredded plastic bags and such. But I do find some cool stuff - mostly kids plastic toys and pennies. I’m still waiting for that diamond bracelet or other item of real value to pop up ;-).
Kathy 04.02.06 at 5:32 pm
I think it’s great that you can even get leafmold from your town. We can get semi-decomposed woodchips (which our county calls compost) from the County landfill, but it’s first-come, first-served, bring your own container and load it yourself. We do have a trailer to bring it home in, but the dump–er, landfill, is on the other side of the county and only open from 7am to 11am. Which is not the most convenient time for my grown sons to go get some for me.
M Sinclair Stevens (Texas) 04.03.06 at 1:21 pm
Austin grinds up Christmas trees and we can pick up the results ourselves. Luckily the pickup site is only a mile from my house; this year I made 10 trips in my Miata which could 3 large leaf and lawn bags full of ground Christmas tree at time. My yard smelled like Christmas throughout January…but I was terrified that a passerby would toss a cigaretted butt into the my yard and set my whole place afire. All January, we were suffering the severist drought conditions with total burnsbans…you weren’t even allowed to weld outside because a spark might set off a wildfire.
Naomi Dagen Bloom 04.04.06 at 3:54 pm
periodically i visit here to look at the pictures now that i live in the city minus gardens. today, having just posted about “nature in the city” and kitchen composting, i was amused about the particularity regarding the appearance of various kinds.
when i was making things from compost, its look did change–depending on whether it was from my kitchen or from a compost farm in oaxaca, mexico, but it all was just perfect for me. guess i’m more into form rather than function.
Ottawa Gardener 10.01.08 at 6:05 pm
I haven’t braved the city compost yet. I have no idea what it looks like but I know what goes into it. I suppose it depends on how they cook it.