Hey Bud, Why is your garden coverd with leaves? I get this question alot when people see my vegetable garden and when the Dude looks at my cabinet grow on Insragram.
The short answer is because this is what we used in the family garden growing up. My dad always mulched with leaves. But it turns out Dad was right even if he didn’t exactly know why.
The simple truth is. Every thing we are trying to accomplish by mulching. The deciduous forest trees have already figured out and perfected millions of years ago. Lay down an overlapping barrier of organic material that will smother out and prevent pest and weeds from taking root, check. Help buffer and retain proper soil moisture, check. Create a biome for beneficial bacteria , microbes and fungi to trive, check. Enrich the soil with organic nutrients and minerals as it naturally breaks down and decomposes, check.
We as gardeners think we are so smart when we figure out the obvious.
When our ansesters were huddle in a cave picking bugs out of each others hair. Mother Nature was already laying down the perfect mulch layer season after season to give her garden earth exacty what it needed when it needed it.
Oh yeah I Almost forgot. This perfect natural and organic mulch is totally FREE.
Hey BitcoinBud! Thanks for the post, it was food for thought. It does seem only natural that dead leaves would be under every plant on Earth in nature.
That being said, I was taught, and always considered gospel, that dead and dying leaves under my indoor plants were a disease vector for insects, etc. I obsessively remove them once they drop, but I would be really interested to hear other members input on the subject.
Seems a very interesting use of something I throw so much of in the garbage (I know, I know.. I want to start composting, just need more room).
@kinda thirsty I would consider leaves a vector for disease in an environment where you were trying to keep things sterile. If there is little to no soil life, the leaves may just sit around and get moldy. However, in my garden, we embrace the mold. In my garden, and likely in Bud’s garden, there is diverse soil life, good mites, earth worms, the very bitey rove beetle, potato bugs, etc. This life will digest the mulch layer. If there is no life, I am not really sure what would happen.
I also wouldn’t think clean undiseased leaves would be a large vector for disease. If you have problems already on your leaves, like PM or spider mites, mulching would be a bad idea. But a healthy leaf has nutrient value to it, so it would be a shame to throw it away.
I wouldn’t use any leaves in my neighborhood. Most the trees are infected with some kind of black fungi or bacteria that grows all over the leafs. They come out with holes and misshapen. If you can find leaves without mold that’s great!
As for saving money, I stopped buying “cleaned straw” now I get a whole bale of hay I can barely fit in my trunk for $8 I bag it all up myself with bags I throw away at work that I have instead. The bale of hay will last me a full 23 months! So for $0.60 a month I get all the hay I could use! This way I can throw it away if I want and start over whatever I need to do! The hat doesn’t fall apart as easily as the leafs so it’s easier to work with when I have to top dress every there week. Good job! Keep up the organic goodness!
I would love to mulch from a soil health angle, but our area is extremely humid, so mold is a big issue. Broad-leaf weeds that harbor PM, brown mold spore & other mold spores are all around us.
It typically doesn’t mess with my outdoor flowers (non-cannabis) unless the plant was already sick anyway. As long as the environment in your room is right, I wouldn’t expect a problem.
For me, though… we fought PM so much in our first couple of years & it was so heart-breaking that I’m gun-shy, even though we haven’t seen a hint of PM since we got the right temp/humidity during flower.
I use all kinds of things for mulch. I buy dry herbs in bulk such as comfrey, yarrow,clovers, etc., Leaves from my yard, and most importantly – my leftovers from my bud harvests. All fan leaves, sticks and stems, and all larf and sugar leaf after extraction.
If you live where those herbs are native just wild harvest and dry them.
Dandelion greens, mullein, comfrey, stinging nettles, clovers are everywhere!
I’ve been considering doing something like this for awhile now, I’m always throwing fan leaves from my girls and other plant material into my ‘kitchen composter’ to go out to with the rest of the compost. Maybe I’ll skip the middle man one of these days and give this a shot. Especially with all the extra lemon balm leaves I’ve been ending up with lately, maybe that’ll act as a pest deterrent too. Great post, Bud!
Let me preface by saying that I am new to cannabis. I only have two completed grows under my belt along with my current cabinet grow. I am sure that eventually something I try to cross over isn’t going to work. But leaf mulch won’t be it.
I also want to say that all of the concerns against using it are vaild. If you don’t have full confidence in your starting materials then defiantly do not use them.
My trees are healthy and have never been sprayed with chemical pesticides or fertilizers. I am blessed to live in a pretty pristine old growth forest that borders a National forest and nature preserve.
I also must admit that I am a pretty avid composting fanatic. On my three acre permaculture land lab l produce my own thermophilic compost, Bokashi compost, Lactic digested fish compost, vermicompost, bio-char, fermented plant juices and fungal dominate leaf mould,
Good fungal dominated fully composted leaf mould takes about three years to complete. The leaves I use as mulch are at least a year old usually the top layer of the second year pile. I would never use fresh fallen or green leaves as mulch. Any insects or other pathogens that feed on living plant tissue have long since moved on by the second year.
Obviously not everone has access to imputs like these, but if you do then by all means close the loop and use them.
I also am by no means against other mulches. There are many good natural mulches such as straw, hay and shredded wood mulch, I have used them all. Although these come with there own issues. Straw is a byproduct of wheat farms that are regularly sprayed with chemicals not to mention most commercial wheat are GMOs. Hay is usually full of seed and depending on the farm may have been sprayed with drying coditioners during the bailing process.
To wrap it up. Use what you have confidence in and know where your imputs come from and how they are grown and processed.
Happy gardening and green love.
BitcoinBud.