I started mulching my garden about 10 years ago, a few years into our gardening journey. I don’t know why I started and I certainly didn’t know the function that it would play in my own garden. I had a Stella season that summer, many asked me what my secret was and all I could answer was mulch, not knowing the finer details.

During that time learning in our suburban garden, I used the time to research and experiment methods I could use on our future property. I spent many years absorbing all the literature I could on the topics of regeneration and natural farming. I was beginning to understand there was more to mulch than just making the area look pretty.

Some of my favorite reasons to mulch would be the reduction in the need to weed. I have over 750m2 of growing space and there have been times that preparing the patch in Spring was too overwhelming. My solution for this was sheet mulching, covering the area in thick layers of newspaper and toping it with mulch. In other areas where this wasn’t possible, I manually weeded adding a layer of compost and mulch on top greatly reduced the need to weed, and in a patch that was prone to stinging nettle, ground ivy and chickweed infestations. Bare ground wants to cover herself, a friend recently told me nature doesn’t like to be naked and that is so true and evident. It’s on bare ground that weeds take hold and ‘infest’ but its only because we have taken away the plants that grew there and protected the soil in the first place.

The reduction in the need to water would also be another favorite benefit. Watering my growing area can take several hours a day and is daily in drought, which is problematic when you are reliant on the water you can store yourself. My soil is silt, so when it dries out it turns to rock, I wish this was an exaggeration but it is not. The areas that have a nice thick layer of organic matter in the form of hot compost and straw mulch hold so much water. It was amazing to see the differences in the gardens that had received this treatment and those that have not yet. My garlic patches didn’t get compost and a fresh layer of mulch as this will happen once they are harvested, for ease. The soil there was hard, cracked and devoid of life. The areas that have compost and mulch are moist, soft and full of worms and haven’t had the need to water. Plants that are not water stressed grow quicker, resist pest attacks and taste better. My first year growing cucumbers here in pure silt resulted in bitter cucumbers that no one wanted to eat, the following year growing in rich soil full of compost and mulch resulted in delicious, crunchy and nutty cucumbers that we couldn’t get enough of, much different to those you could ever find in a supermarket.

The last point I want to touch on before we delve into the free ways you can mulch your garden would be the function of mulch to protection soil life, in one tablespoon of soil there are 50 billion microbes. This is something that I’m just delving into in my own research, but in my opinion this is the most important reason for keeping the soil covered of all.

Microbes play a crucial role in nutrient cycling, nutrient recycling is something I will touch on in another blog post, but in essence they are your gardens decomposers. There are several different types of microbes including mycorrhizal fungi, nitrifying bacteria, archaea or protists. Some can fix nitrogen through a symbiotic relationships where nodules on plants roots can draw gaseous nitrogen from the atmosphere converting it into a useable form of nitrogen. Some can store carbon in the soil, this is done when the fauna in our garden consume vegetation and leave organic mater behind (poop), microbes then decompose this further creating gardener gold, humus, which builds soil structure, increases water infiltration and holding capacity, increases nutrient retention and creates aeration in the soil.

For microbes to survive they need 3 components, food, water and oxygen. Providing organic mulch is sufficient to not only feed your microbes, by providing habitat for other organisms or by breaking down but also creating habitat for them too. I like to refresh my mulch every 6 months at the beginning of autumn and then again at the beginning of spring. In spring I will also spread a nice thick layer of hot compost. Mulching your garden doesn’t need to be expensive, there are so many ways that you can recycle and nutrient cycle in your garden.

ONE - Grow A Green Manure Crop

This can have an initial start up cost. We bought a bulka bag (1 tonne bag) full of dun peas. These peas were bought to be used as an ingredient in our chicken and pig feed. I needed a quick solution to add organic matter to a garden bed so took a few kilos and spread them on that patch. I chopped and dropped before flowering and the productivity from this bed compared to it’s sister bed was incredible, with the cover crop being the only difference. While this is not technically free on my scale ( I recently seeded a 300m2 patch which took about 50kg of seed which cost about 30c a kilo) it can very much be free on the home garden scale. Growing and saving seed from legumes is so easy and viable. I like to add an inoculant to my seeds in gardens that haven’t had them before, this encourages the roots to form nodules and fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Once a bed is inoculated it wont need to be done again, and if you wish to not do this step, the bacteria will slowly inhabit this area naturally.

TWO - Autumn Leaves

I don’t understand why people throw their leaves away, they are such a valuable resource in the garden. You can either break them down into leaf mold first, which is just piling them up somewhere and forgetting about them for a year or two, the process uses fungi to break down and loves cooler weather. Otherwise you can shred them up in a mulcher or layer them with other organic matter like straw. If they are just placed on top they may blow away if they are in a windy site.

THREE - Seaweed

This one requires a bit of research, each council has different regulations on how much seaweed you can gather from the beaches. Gather some, leaving some for others, take it home, give it a bit of a wash to remove the excess salt and layer it on to your garden. The great thing about seaweed is that is doesn’t readily break down like other organic mulches. This is great in gardens that you do not need to add organic matter too, rather retaining moisture. Seaweed contains all the trace elements plants need and when it does slowly break down it will impart all these into your garden.

FOUR - Spoilt Hay, Straw Or Silage

Sometimes you can score this for free and I have on several occasions. Popping a post on your local Facebook community notice board can help your search. I like to hot compost hay first as it does contain a lot of grass seeds which can become a nightmare in your garden, otherwise if you have chickens you can put a bale in their pen, let them scratch around and eat all the seeds, then you can gather it up and spread it seed free. Straw is my favorite and if you can’t get it for free you can find it cheap in many areas, especially those that grow grain crops. I clean out a neighbors shed at the end of each season and can get a couple of large trailer loads this way. Silage is also a great a weed free option. It is essentially fermented grass, it stinks (your hands will stink even after scrubbing) and hard to move around as it matts together but is wonderful for building soil.

FIVE - Cut & Dried Lawn

Why waste your grass clippings? Instead of catching them let them dry in place then rack them up and spread it on your garden, spreading them wet will matt them together creating a barrier for water to enter the soil. If you have a larger area of grass you can always try your hand with a scythe, they are incredibly efficient and you can get to the grass before it forms seed heads. One of my favorite farmer uses this method, and the results he sees is amazing.

SIX - Woodchips

Often you can get your hands on these for free, either by calling your local arborist (you would need to take a truck load) or keeping your eye out on the side of the road, where council workers usually dump the days work there free for the taking. My caution here would be to not bury it, otherwise it can draw down the nitrogen making it unavailable to the plants growing there. Using this method which many call the ‘back to Eden’ method can take a few years to establish, but once up and running is a wonderful system. If you need to build soil quickly you can always layer up, putting organic matter like hay underneath wood chips.

SEVEN - Grow Your Own Mulch

There are many perennial plants you can grow that you can chop and drop and use as a mulch. I read somewhere that you should be dedicating 30% of your growing space to mulch production. Plants like comfrey, Tagasaste, albizia and other small legume trees, burdock and borage are all good places to start. Of course end of season pruning’s can be used too, be it from your fruit trees, corn, sunflower, yacon or Jerusalem artichoke crops, I’ve even chopped up tomato and pumpkin plants right where they grew to enrich the soil for the next season crops.

EIGHT - Coffee Grinds

This is much easier to obtain in suburban or city areas. I used to collect several bucket a week from a local café. They saved on disposal fees, I saved it from landfill and it made the most wonderful mulch. Duck into your local and strike up a conversation with the manager or owner, they are often more than willing for it to be used in someone’s garden than thrown in the bin. But do be aware that you do need to be committed to picking it up regularly.

NINE - Living Mulch

This is one of the most simple ways to mulch a garden. For me it stems back to the three sisters companion planting system. The Aztecs were wise enough to discover this symbiotic relationship these plants all play together. The corn grows and becomes a support for the beans, the beans grow up the corn and fix nitrogen for the hungry corn plants while the squash grows along the ground, regulating the soil temperature and preserving moisture by shading the ground. You can utilize this system regardless of weather you want to grow the three sisters or not. Growing crops like melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and sweet potatoes will all act as a living mulch, and once you harvest the crop you can leave that organic matter in place.

TEN - Coffee Sacks Or Old Cotton Towels & Clothes

Sometimes you can get coffee or potato sacks for free and you can use old cotton towel and clothing instead. While they don’t necessarily add organic matter to the soil they do conserve water and prevent evaporation. I like to use these when I am resting beds or preparing them for spring but not quite ready to plant out yet. I usually layer hot compost, straw and then place hessian sacks on top, when I’m ready to plant I remove the sacks for next time. They are also wonderful to use for sprouting carrots. Carrot seeds need to be constantly wet to germinate and this can take 2 weeks. So I plant the seeds lay hessian sacks on top and then water daily, sometimes not even. This retains the moisture and when I see the first sprouts I remove the sacks and dry and store for next time. You do want to make sure the old clothing and towels are 100% cotton so you don’t end up with micro plastics in your beautiful organic garden.

They are my top ten free ways to mulch your garden, I hope you enjoyed the list and were inspired to cover your dirt. Do you have any free ways you like to mulch your garden that I have or have not listed?