Good morning! I'm new GardenStew and have a question that will probably make most of you laugh. (Please don't judge - LOL.) I bought some mulch to put in a garden near my house. The smell of manure is so bad that I am about to remove it all. When I bought the mulch, I saw many types of mulch that noted they had manure in them. The one I ended up buying said "organic" but didn't smell like the packages that included manure. I assumed "organic" meant one of the other hundreds of "organic" ingredients for gardening. Since it didn't say "manure" on it like so many other brands did, I didn't think that was one of the ingredients. Plus, it didn't smell, while the others did. Anyhow, we have a big party coming up this Saturday (7/26), and I'm hoping there's a way to get rid of the smell so that I don't have to remove it all. Any suggestions on how to get rid of the smell???? Thanks!
I never thought about removing the smell...but it should get better over a few days...or you could get some cedar mulch and put it on top of that...cedar smells much better. Good luck.
Hi, welcome to GardenStew. How about posting an intro of yourself in the Welcome to GardenStew forum so we can get to know each other. Was the stuff wet in the package when you bought it? It might not have manure in it, but it could have gone 'sour' from staying wet in the bag. I am with gardenmama, cover it with a shredded Cedar mulch. That's the only mulch I use, it smells great.
I guess it could have been wet in the bags at the store. We did have a couple rain storms during the days prior. Thanks so much for suggesting the cedar mulch. The mulch we bought IS cedar, but it has been dyed black (we were looking for black mulch). Hmmmm....
Oh, I thought you were talking about using a compost for mulch, many gardeners do that. There could be something about the black dye used on the cedar that caused it to sour then. Have you seen the mulch made from shredded tires? It is expensive but if the bed size is relatively small it might be better than the dyed cedar.
The rubber mulch sounds like a great idea! Thanks. I will wait until Friday, and if the smell does not go away, I may have to remove most of it and replace it with the rubber stuff. Thanks again!!
I bought a bag of potting soil this season that really smelled. It did go away after a few days when it could get some air...none of the others bag smelled so I am not sure what went wrong here...Hopefully your mulch smell has improved or you solved your problem.
I'm not sure about the smell, hopefully by now your all set with that but...I have to add my two cents about the dye...they say the dye is not good for your plants. I haven't used anything with dye for a few years since hearing that. I don't know if it really is true but I couldn't afford to take any chances as I was new at the whole gardening thing. My plants have been great...
I have read that the rubber mulch leaches all kinds of poisons into the soil, so I wont ever use that. Rubber has sulfur and all kinds of nasty petro chemicals in it. Cedar is good stuff. So are pine needles, bark chips, and peat moss. Goats make good fertilizer if you have room for a goat.
