As the winter season approaches, many gardeners venture out to the garden center for mulch, to protect their gardens through months of bitter cold temperatures. This can be very expensive, unnecessary, and entirely avoidable with a little more planning throughout the year. Recycled plants, and plant debris are a much more environmentally beneficial alternative.

Lawn clippings, and fallen leaves are the two most abundant sources of free mulch. Far too often grass, and leaves are raked, bagged, and shipped off to local landfills. This is only a waste of landfill space, plastic, and money. Trashing these items is also a waste of valuable organic nutrients, and mulch. Grass, and leaves contain most nutrients required by plants. These can be reclaimed through proper composting. To prevent the grass from matting, and molding alternate the layers of grass, and leaves. Once combined, and fully decomposed, the nutrient rich compost will make a wonderful, money saving addition to any garden. The use of this recycled yard debris as mulch in the winter months will save countless dollars, compared to buying bags of mulch. If you have not been saving grass all year, leaves alone can provide a very well insulating mulch for winter.

September 9th, 2011 | Uncategorized