The Nude Gardener – To Mulch or Not to Mulch

Happy Growing, Gardeners.

For raised bed gardeners like myself, the question of mulching has been driven around for a long time with varying opinions. Figured I might as throw in my 2 cents worth. So here’s the answer………. (drum roll, please)………… Yes……… and no. 

 What???

You see, mulch has some very specific functions in a raised bed: moisture retention, weed control, and ground cooling. 

Let’s start with the last one first, ground cooling. Plants in your veggie garden tend to like ground temperature around 75°. Typical flat gardens get heated by the sun from only one direction, above. This means the earth below the surface can help keep the temperature down at the root level. But a raised bed can be heated from above, and all sides. Soil getting too hot, above 85°, can stress the plant, causing bloom loss, or worse. Mulching acts like an insulation, creating pockets of air between particles like the insulation in your home. This reduces the amount of airflow and sunlight that can get to the medium surface and help keep the ground cool. BUT………..(there is always a BUT and gardening nude shows mine off)…..There is a time to apply mulch. You see, in the early spring the ground is cold. In late April, when I can start getting my garden planted, the ground in my beds is about 60°. That’s a little chilly and if it remains that cool it could stunt my plants growth. In this case, covering the ground with mulch could make it stay cooler longer. You may want to delay the mulch for 2 – 4 weeks, depending on your location, to allow your beds to warm up a little.

On top of keeping the ground cool, is moisture retention. Of course, watering is important if you want your veggies to survive, but watering in a raised bed can have a lot of evaporation. Keeping the sun off the surface of your dirt is the only way to effectively retain that water. A raised bed, even watered deeply, can lose that water in a couple hours of direct sunlight, and the plants suffer. Maintaining mulch can drastically reduce the water loss and the stress on the plant, not to mention your water bill.

Now let’s talk about the part of this blog designed to save your back: weed control. There’s nothing worse than constantly walking around your garden, bending over for 15 minutes at a time, pulling weeds, then moving to the next bed and repeating, like washing your hair. Nothing is going to keep all the weeds out, but mulch can help in two ways. First, it can keep seeds from reaching the soil in your beds, sitting on top, rotting. Even some of the seeds that do reach the soil are starved for sunlight and die before reaching it. Remember though, that you will still have to pull some weeds, but it’s a whole lot better taking two minutes than 15.

There is a reason you may not want to mulch a bed.  If you grow heavily vined items like sweet potatoes, mulching might be overkill.  My sweet potato vines have such a heavy leaf cover, there's just no need for mulch, and putting mulch on that bed would just be more I have to dig through.

Stay Naked

The Nude Gardener