Mulch – wonderful stuff!  Serves three main purposes around your garden:

• It keeps the moisture in the ground by preventing direct sunlight hitting the soil
• It helps to prevent weeds growing by covering bare earth
• It beautifies an area by putting down a layer of woodchips rather than looking at either the ground or weed matting

And of course you can pick mulch up most anywhere.  If you have a tiny garden, then maybe it’s economically feasible to just grab a bag or two at Bunnings or your local garden center.  But what if you have a big garden, or even like me a hobby farm?  Suddenly a few bucks a bag doesn’t seem so cheap when you would need about 50 of them!

Well, good news!  There is a place you can go where you can not only get as much mulch as you want for free, but you will be helping the environment by doing so.  That place is your local tip.

The majority of tips practice recycling in a big way.  Our local one has bays where you can drop of cardboard for free, aluminum and glass for free and has some absolutely huge bays for green waste which can be dropped off for a relatively modest fee.

What happens to all that green waste?  Well all the wood and huge tree branches get taken out, put through giant chippers and become great big hills.  And in order to keep those hills from becoming mountains, the majority of tips will let you come and take as much as you like for nothing!

 

So here are some tips for using the… er…. tip.

You will need:

• A ute or trailer
• A pitchfork
• A tarp and rope

When you go there the staff will direct you where to go.  When you reach the mulch hills you need to look for the freshest looking piles.   Because some of these piles sit there for so long in the elements, they might seem fine on top but dig underneath even a few inches and what you will find what was once mulch has turned to compost.  Usually this will be a black or dark grey colour and will smell pretty pungent.  You do not want this stuff.  It’s useless as mulch, lacks the nutrients of regular compost and all it will achieve in your garden is to make it ugly and smelly.  So look for the freshest heaps.  Even these heaps will probably have been poured upon older heaps so as soon as you get deep enough that you hit the grey and smelly stuff, move to the next area.

After you have loaded up your ute or trailer with mulch using your pitchfork (shovels are useless for mulch) make sure you tie a tarp over the top.  Most councils will fine you if you have stuff flying out the back and it will defeat the purpose of getting it for free if you subsequently get pulled up by a copper and get handed a massive fine.

Once you get it home, how you use it is up to you.  To stop weeds you usually want your mulch to be at least an inch or two thick on the ground.  Make sure when placing it around plants you leave a bit of space around the base of each plant or the trunk of each tree.  It allows the soil at the base of the plant to breathe and otherwise when your mulch eventually does rot it will be rotting against your plant.  This could cause damage to your plants or even kill them.  But used properly, mulch can turn an area of your garden from this:

 

To this!

So take the tip and get your mulch from the tip.  You are helping the environment from doing so by using mulch that would otherwise rot and eventually go in to the landfill and more importantly you will be getting as much mulch as you want, for free!

 

Got any other mulching tips?  Would love to read them in the comments section below!