Keep your Landscape Looking its Best with Mulch

Boost the health and beauty of your landscape while reducing on-going maintenance with the help of mulch.

Covering bare soil with mulch helps prevent soil erosion and compaction. Plus, it prevents sunlight from reaching the ground, preventing weed seeds from sprouting. That means less weeding for you.

Eliminate hand trimming and make mowing a breeze by creating mulch beds around trees and shrubs. Take it one step further and combine nearby individual plants into a single planting bed. Once around the larger bed means fewer passes with the mower. Visit Kanavas Landscape Management’s website for more tips on creating planting beds in the landscape.

Mulch to improve your plants’ health and beauty. Grass and weeds are big competitors of young trees and shrubs. Creating a mulch ring around the plants means your trees and shrubs, not the weeds, benefit. Just be sure to pull the mulch away from tree trunks and shrub stems. Mulch piled up trees and shrubs increases the risk of disease. And it provides a great habitat for voles that like to feed on their bark.

Use organic mulches, like woodchips, that improve the soil. As these mulches breakdown they add organic matter to the soil. Over time it improves drainage in clay soils and increases the water holding ability of sandy soils.

Select the mulch that provides the desired function, complements your landscape design and fits your budget. Here are a few of the more common mulches:

Certified playground mulch is a suitable mulch under and six feet around play structures. The mulch has been processed, so the edges are smooth and twigs and sticks have been removed.

Avoid cocoa bean mulch if you have dogs. The sweet smell is attractive to dogs and can cause vomiting, diarrhea and seizures, depending on the amount ingested. Avoid wood mulch that contains twigs that can lodge in your pet’s mouth. Use pet-friendly mulches such as hemlock, shredded pine and cedar.

Hemlock is dark brown, made of small pieces, and works well in formal, informal and natural landscapes. Long lasting cedar is available shredded which is perfect for smaller plants or as chips, suitable for larger plants. It is long lasting and the smell discourages dogs from disturbing the mulch.

Colorful mulches are dyed with a food grade coloring. Select one that complements, but does not overpower your landscape design. Black and brown provide a natural appearance, like soil, while oranges and red add a bit of color to the planting beds.

Once you select the best mulch for the job, calculate how much mulch is needed. Measure the length and width of each bed to determine the square footage. Add the square footage of each bed you plan to mulch. You’ll need about one cubic yard of mulch to cover 100 square feet of soil at a three-inch depth. Last, decide if you have the time to spread the mulch yourself or if you need to hire a professional to do the job. Either way you and your plants will enjoy the benefits and beauty the mulch provides.