2 Types Of Do-It-Yourself Mulch To Help Protect Your Garden Soil

Mulch placed in a layer over your garden soil adds a rich brown look to the soil to improve its appearance and can help the health of your garden soil. Mulch added to your soil can help you retain soil moisture, prevent erosion, and create a barrier to weed growth. Here are two methods to help you make a healthy compost and add it to your soil for its many benefits.

Leaves and Grass Mulch

When you decide to make your own mulch from organic materials you have on hand at home or in your yard, you are essentially adding back natural materials to the soil and replenish the soil with necessary nutrients in the process. 

If you have access to leaves in the fall, begin collecting grass clippings just before you begin this project. Make sure the leaves are dried out and not wet, then shred them using your lawn mower. Create a mulch pile in an area of your yard where you pile alternate layers of shredded leaves and grass clippings. Make sure the leaves make up a majority of the pile, broken up with thin layers of grass clippings throughout the pile. 

Spray the pile of leaves and grass clippings lightly with your garden hose to moisten but not saturate the pile. Cover the pile with a tarp and weight it down with rocks or bricks to keep the materials in one place during the winter. The shredded leaves will begin to slightly decompose during the winter as they combine with the nitrogen from the grass clippings, leaving you with a rich-brown mulch material in the spring.

Remove the tarp in the spring and spread the mulch material onto the soil around your plants as soon as the soil has warmed from winter, which is usually late spring to early summer. Throughout the year, the mulch will continue to decompose, adding nutrients to the soil. Then, at the end of the season, you can mix the mulch into the soil to boost the nutrient content for the next season.

Newspaper Mulch

Using old newspapers is an easier process to make into a mulch layer, as you don't have to prepare it over the winter. As soon as you have enough newspapers to cover the soil around your garden plants, soak the newspapers in a bucket of water until they are saturated, then layer the newspaper around the plants and over the soil. It is helpful to layer the newspapers several layers thick to create a strong barrier.

Next, layer some lawn clippings onto the wet newspaper. The weight of the water and the lawn clippings will keep the newspapers in place until it can harden into a thick layer. At the end of the season, the newspaper and clippings should have begun to break down so you can till it into the soil.

Use these tips to create a mulch for your garden soil. For more tips, contact a company like All Season Landscaping.

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