Mulch is a barrier that is used to protect plants. It can be synthetic, such as barrier plastics. It can be non-organic, such as a layer of stones of shells. And there are a plethora of mulches that are made of organic materials, such as wool, jute, leaf mould, bark chippings, cardboard, compost, etc. We sell a range of mulch materials, predominantly made of wool or recycled jute coffee sacks, so I want to tell you a bit more about them, their properties and benefits.

How does mulch protect plants?

There are four main benefits of our natural mulch plant protection. These are:

·         Retaining water by reducing evaporation

·         Supressing weeds, reducing weed competition

·         Regulating temperature – protecting the roots from excesses of heat and cold.

·         Delivering nutrients to the plants as they biodegrade.

All of them also provide an element of protection against slugs and snails, though we will never promise 100% protection!

What is the best mulch for deterring weeds?

Our recycled coffee sack jute mulch mats are brilliant for supressing weeds. They are made to our specification: 5mm thick densely needle felted. This makes them thicker than a lot of the weed control hessian jutes you see on the market. We’ve got a range of sizes that fit on a plant pot, round the plant in the bed, or round the tree in the field. If it’s not windy they don’t even need pegging out, but we also do some little bamboo skewers that pin them down if need be. What we find is that as the weeds grow, they sort of grow into the jute fibre and add to the matting properties, assisting in keeping it firmly to the ground.

We also do the jute in full rolls, 25m x 1m, if you want to mulch a larger area. We’ve suppressed a whole bed of ground elder using this mulch.

What are the benefits of mulching trees?

Trees are often planted as small whips, between 30cm and 60 cm tall. The existing vegetation can quickly grow bigger than the trees and swamp them out, competing for light, moisture and nutrients. It is common to use herbicide around the tree, or to strim which risks accidentally strimming the tree itself. Fitting a mulch mat around the trees protects them from all of these. It worked very well at the 13 acre site at Bassenthwaite, though I have to say it was quite a job to get 25,000 mulch mats delivered to site and then fitted round every single tree. It was worth the effort though.

What is the best mulch for delivering nutrients to the plants?

The sheep wool pellets are a wonderfully versatile product. They are very dense so they can absorb a considerable amount of water and slowly release this. If they are used as mulch around the plants, they will swell up and expand. They regulate water and gradually biodegrade to release nutrients. They are made with greasy wool so they contain a mix of nutrients – read more in depth about it here. They are also good at deterring slugs and snails. They are also excellent at retaining then releasing moisture in hanging baskets and planters.

What is the most aesthetically pleasing mulch?

Some mulches are very effective but can look, well, a bit tatty. We’ve got raw sheep wool draped around the base of the trees at our premises in Workington and I must admit it looks like an unfortunate sheep has exploded at the site. It got blown about a bit in the last storm.

Our felt shillies are so named because they resemble slate shillies, or chippings. They take us a while to make but they result in a neat chopped up felt. They are made from the off-cuts of our Chimney Sheep felt which is a densely made 12mm thick Herdwick felt. These give plants a tidy, finished look. They retain water, deter slugs (especially if you pour garlic tea over them) and slowly biodegrade to add nutrients, but they do last a surprisingly long time before they break down.

What is the cheapest natural mulch?

Cardboard! But you have to be careful not to use card with too much printing on it, as this will introduce contaminants to the garden. Of our products, the raw wool is the most cost effective, if you’re not worried about how it looks. It’s a shame to put good wool on the veg patch but we end up with more wool than we can use for our products and it’s better to use it for compost than to burn it. At £30 for a 10 kilo bag, you get a lot of wool mulch for your money. If you want an even bigger lot, email us at info@chimneysheep.co.uk and we can see about sending larger quantities.  This is greasy wool, straight from the sheep so it can be fairly pungent. Greasy sheep wool has been found to deter deer and rabbits, so it can be used as a pest deterrent too.

Which mulch product is the easiest to use?

Our popular garden wool felt is easy to use and very versatile. You can use it to create a new bed by laying it over the grass / weeds and piling compost on top, then planting it up. Watch no-dig guru Charle Dowding explain how to use it.

It’s also good for capillary matting, for protecting plants from frost, and a multitude of other uses in the garden. It breaks down within 6 months or so, delivering nutrients to the soil.

If you want to make all of the mulches a little more slug-proof, then we recommend pouring over a garlic tea. The mulch will hold the smell of the garlic which smells revolting to the poor things so they give up and go elsewhere for their dinner.