Question about using mulch in the veggie garden...confudido!

Or carrots. Or peas.

 

Thats one thing I am battling my hubby about ! High nitrogen fertilizer is not good for fruit trees! All you get is leaves,, few fruit ! Same thing with vegetables !

 

Is it not a better practice to fertilize weakly bi weekly generally? Its a great time to show bugs how much you love them with some neem oil or possibly hug a fungus and give it some copper soap?

 

i think that 2 year old wood chips is ideal mulch. thats what the back to Eden guy uses


BUT think twice before using it... this back to eden style garden has been known to backfire.
if your soil is high in clay back to Eden wood chip mulch ends up making the soil never able to dry out and causes root rot.
so, i think a thick layer of wood mulch is useful in dry parts of the world or places with very sandy soil.

 

maybe the best mulch is compost + densely planted crops.
compost has the N-P-K the plants need and its ready to use.
and the fact that the crops are densely planted ends up shading the ground, such that weeds are starved of light, and water isn't evaporated away.

 

I am going to disagree with you in some detail on clay. Our clay is nasty. 5 pH, and either water logged or hard as cement, rarely in the middle.

The hyphae from the fungi that come to the biodegradation party are WONDERFUL for clay. In fact, its best if you do not dig or till it and act like those top few inches are meaningful. The clay will laugh and choke your roots. Just throw your organics on top of clay and go away. You can use molasses too, about 4 gallons per acre, to soften the clay. Its still bio-bugs with roots doing the work. As to a particular fungus, or like root rot, drainage only improves over time. That first year not so much.

 

Depends on what you are fertilizing with ! I only use 17 17 17 commercial fertilizer ! I fertilize when I plant and broadcast the top of the rows if its going to rain or if I am going to water the garden ! Don`t use the other two either,, I use permethrin that I mix in a low ratio unless there are bugs I need to deal with which is rare for me ! I use it as a preventative rather than a insecticide ! And I have the weed that bugs like better than my vegetables that I let grow at the back of the garden ! I keep all the tops sprayed for potato bugs and such and the leaves and stems of the squash plant so no squash bugs or borers !

 

So an ounce per gallon of prevention spray is better than a pound of hard core bug killer? I agree so much, as it is horrible to see the virus or wilt show up because it is too late by then.