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Beware Of Harmful Mulch When Mulching Your Plants
The increasingly-used practice of mulching provides valuable benefits to both soil and plants, and is something that is recommended. However, in a few regions you do need to be careful. Some areas, a popular type of mulch is produced from shredded hardwood bark, which is a waste product from sawmills. Before cutting the logs, they're debarked, and the bark used to be a big problem for the mills.
Selling the bark in the form of mulch was genuine genius, but unfortunately the product isn't necessarily safe for garden use. The mills heap the bark up high to avoid wasting space, and with little demand for the mulch in winter the piles get really high. The hazard for your garden arises from the mulch getting compacted too tightly by the front end loaders having to drive up onto the heaps. The bark material will not decompose unless it's given oxygen, and time, which is achieved by air passing through it. If compressed too tightly, the circulation of air is inhibited and the waste matter becomes increasingly hot, to the extent that it could spontaneously combust.
When it gets hotter, it also causes the mulch to become toxic, because it can't release the gas. Digging into the mulch and spreading it releases a terrible stink and also creates a danger to your plants. Your plants could be burn-damaged because of the hot, poisonous gas which escapes from the mulch. Disperse the noxious mulch around the plants, and in a matter of minutes they may be brown. The grass could possibly be turned brown by dumping a load of this kind of mulch on the lawn. Unfortunately you'll only know that the mulch was toxic when you discover the undesirable "browning of the green."
Unhealthy mulch carries a strong odor once you get down to it in the pile, but so does the good mulch, and the smell is different, but you may not be able to tell the difference. It could be somewhat darker in color, so if you suspect a problem, take a couple of shovels full, and place them around your least important plant, and see what happens. When doing this just remember to take mulch from closer to the center than the surface of the pile. If after 24 hours your plant continues to be fine, then the mulch is probably okay.
It may not be such a big deal, but it's advisable to know about it before the time, rather than bumping your head. It might not make you too pleased to put something on your plants, and later discover they were burned. Now that you've been informed about harmful mulch, you can yet get all the benefits without the pain by getting your mulch from a source that can assure you they have taken the correct measures to avoid it.
Selling the bark in the form of mulch was genuine genius, but unfortunately the product isn't necessarily safe for garden use. The mills heap the bark up high to avoid wasting space, and with little demand for the mulch in winter the piles get really high. The hazard for your garden arises from the mulch getting compacted too tightly by the front end loaders having to drive up onto the heaps. The bark material will not decompose unless it's given oxygen, and time, which is achieved by air passing through it. If compressed too tightly, the circulation of air is inhibited and the waste matter becomes increasingly hot, to the extent that it could spontaneously combust.
When it gets hotter, it also causes the mulch to become toxic, because it can't release the gas. Digging into the mulch and spreading it releases a terrible stink and also creates a danger to your plants. Your plants could be burn-damaged because of the hot, poisonous gas which escapes from the mulch. Disperse the noxious mulch around the plants, and in a matter of minutes they may be brown. The grass could possibly be turned brown by dumping a load of this kind of mulch on the lawn. Unfortunately you'll only know that the mulch was toxic when you discover the undesirable "browning of the green."
Unhealthy mulch carries a strong odor once you get down to it in the pile, but so does the good mulch, and the smell is different, but you may not be able to tell the difference. It could be somewhat darker in color, so if you suspect a problem, take a couple of shovels full, and place them around your least important plant, and see what happens. When doing this just remember to take mulch from closer to the center than the surface of the pile. If after 24 hours your plant continues to be fine, then the mulch is probably okay.
It may not be such a big deal, but it's advisable to know about it before the time, rather than bumping your head. It might not make you too pleased to put something on your plants, and later discover they were burned. Now that you've been informed about harmful mulch, you can yet get all the benefits without the pain by getting your mulch from a source that can assure you they have taken the correct measures to avoid it.
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