Mind Your Mulch: Eco-friendly Mulch
The right mulch can add aesthetic value and save water in your garden. Just make sure you’re choosing wisely.
March/April 2003
By Ann D. Brucklacher
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Peanut shells, cocoa hulls, pine bark and needles, and rubber make great mulch.
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It’s one of the basics of any garden. Mulch blocks weeds, regulates soil temperature and moisture, fights erosion, and keeps gardens looking neat and trim. Yet some mulch can actually harm your plants and the environment. By minding your mulches, you can find mulch that is both garden- and eco-friendly.
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A mulch to avoid
Shredded cypress is one of the most popular mulches on the market. However, this relatively low-priced mulch comes with high environmental costs. According to University of Florida data, timber companies grind some 129,000 tons of the state’s cypress into mulch each year, part of a cycle that takes nearly 3 million more cubic feet of cypress than it replaces.
Cypress thrives in freshwater wetlands, where it stores and filters water resources and provides a vital wildlife habitat. This graceful native tree grows slowly and, once cut, is difficult to replace. Today logging companies clear-cut younger stands, and though mill remnants make up some cypress mulch products, entire trees make up others.
Cypress also has some mulching drawbacks. Shredded cypress, like many other shredded woods, will fade in color and decay within a year or two. Cypress mulches can also form fungal mats that inhibit water drainage.
Eco-friendly mulches
Eucalyptus
Unlike cypress, renewable eucalyptus grows rapidly on commercial plantations. The mulch’s pleasing scent doubles as a deterrent to fleas and other lawn and garden pests. Eucalyptus also retains its color longer than cypress, aging from golden yellow to reddish tones. You may need to replace eucalyptus more frequently than pine bark or other wood chips, however, because it settles into the soil.
Melaleuca
Exotic Australian melaleuca (Melaleuca quinquenervia), or paperbark tea tree, has invaded more than half a million acres of Florida wetlands. Spreading rapidly by fire, melaleuca has turned vast portions of the Everglades’ saw grass prairie into dense, monoculture forests. Forestry Resources of Fort Myers, Florida, has joined environmental groups seeking to remove melaleuca. The company processes melaleuca into mulch and other products and helps replant native cypress.
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