How do you protect your garden when you are threatened by the damages your plants could suffer due to many factors? Well, it is a good idea to dig out soil well, put good seeds and manually take good care of the soil. Still, that is not enough! You need mulch to be added to the surface of soil for protecting it from temperature irregularities and for the sake of enhancement of the structure of soil.
As you are familiar with the significance benefits that mulch could provide to your garden, let us talk about mulch types. Basically, it could be divided into two types: organic mulch and inorganic mulch. We will discuss ten most important types of mulches that could prove to be useful for your garden.
Types Of Mulches
1. Rock Mulch
It could definitely be a good idea to use rocks for your soil if you want a solid base that would be easy to use in perennial plants. Although pebbles could also be used as landscape mulch yet rocks have a definite advantage over pebbles. Rocks could easily be dug out due to their bigger size and provide maximum protection in the form of better heat absorption.
2. Wood Chip Mulch
It is common type of mulch which incorporates wood and bark that could give good protection to your soil. Pine is one of the important uses of wood bark that are used as natural mulch. Moreover, cedar and cypress trees are also used that could be used as mulch for your landscape.
3. Straw Mulch
The use of straw as mulch is significant for using in vegetable gardens because it is best suited for vegetables. However, to avoid weed production in winter, it is advisable to use lesser amount. The use of straw mulch will help you in walking easily around the garden as well. Hence, it is sometimes preferred over other sort of mulches.
4. Plastic Mulch
The use of black plastic is quite common and makes good mulch especially if you have to get rid of weeds for overgrowing in your garden. However, you will have to use wood bark as well for absorbing heat by putting it above the black plastic.
5. Cedar Mulch
This wooden mulch provides great benefits to the soil in the form of durable wood bark. It smells good and is better to use in large sizes of wooden bark for a good deal of protection.
6. Cypress Mulch
While using cypress as mulch, it is advisable for you to get to know about the source of the bark. There needs to be genuine wooden bark of cypress tree in case you want good formulated mulch. It is often rare to get original cypress due to massive shortage of trees as a result of cutting of cypress trees at a large scale.
7. Cocoa Hull Mulch
Many gardeners love to use cocoa beans as mulch because of the great fragrance they give and pleasing appeal and color. However, in case you having pets around that garden area, you need to avoid the use of cocas hull because it is toxic for many pets. They might eat away the poisonous beans and would end in deadly outcomes.
8. Grass Mulch
In case of using grass clipping above your garden soil, make sure you use green grass due to the abundance of nitrogen inside it and it will break down quite well into the soil. However, if the grass has turned brown, it might not have the amount of nitrogen necessary for the plants.
9. Landscape Fabric
As compared to black plastic and some other types of mulch, fabric mulch enables water and air to pass through it which makes it a desirable entity to be used. It is not organic in nature but it can be used for results like naturals.
10. Newspaper Mulch
You might not know before but newspaper makes really effective types of mulch for your garden. You need to top up the newspaper with wood or some natural mulch to not let it sway.
So, we are done with the brief description of top ten mulches that you can use for your landscape according to your needs. Pick out the one that best suits your garden requirements and good luck for your garden!