← Soil fertility H03-05 · Module 5 of 7 · Pages: 18 · Worksheets: 5

Mulch: straw, hay, leaves, cardboard

Which mulch for which crop, how much material you need, when to put it down, how to make a no-dig bed and how to avoid slugs, voles and nitrogen lock-up

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Mulch: straw, hay, leaves, cardboard

In short

  • Mulch warmth-loving vegetables once the soil at 10 cm is above 15 °C (59 °F) — in lowland UK and Ireland usually late May to mid-June.
  • Before mulching: weed and water well. Mulch keeps moisture in, but it doesn't create it.
  • 1 cm of mulch on 1 m² = 10 litres. A small bale of straw covers roughly 4–6 m² with a 10 cm layer.
  • Wood chip and sawdust on the surface, never mixed into the soil, because then they take nitrogen.
  • Keep mulch 5 cm from vegetable stems and 10–20 cm from fruit tree trunks.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What mulch does
  2. Materials: what goes where
  3. How much material you need
  4. When to mulch
  5. The no-dig garden
  6. Fruit trees, soft fruit and paths
  7. Problems and solutions
  8. Where to find mulch for free
  9. Common mistakes
  10. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Mulch calculator
  • Bed-by-bed mulch plan
  • Mulch sources
  • Mulch and no-mulch trial
  • Mulch calendar

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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