During the dry weather over the summer, we've become even more aware of wool's superpower for retaining water around plants. The plants that had wool around them, whether that was just the raw wool, the felt shillies, woolch or wool pellets, all retained the water so much more effectively than anything else.
Our jute mulch mats are excellent for durability, but we've started making mulch mats out of pure Herdwick wool with a thin core of jute scrim to help hold them together and make them last longer. The wool really helps to hold the moisture in, plus suppress weeds, protect from frost, insulate from temperature fluctuation AND as if that wasn't enough, it will slowly biodegrade to add nutrients. FINALLY, we can't promise this, but wool does deter slugs and snails so the wool mulch mats should help to keep these guys off too.
We collect Herdwick wool directly from local farmers, paying more than they would get if it was sent to auction. The Herdwick wool is predominantly used for our chimney blockers, but also gets made into rugs and a whole host of other products. We end up with a lot of scraps. We hate waste at Chimney Sheep, so the scraps are sent off to a mill in Yorkshire which re-fluffs the scraps back into usable wool, mixes it with 50% virgin Herdwick wool, and makes it into the felt we cut up to make the mulch mats. This means it’s a very durable and dense felt.
We use a hessian scrim, made of jute, which is a plant that readily composts. Other mulch mats on the market use a synthetic “biodegradable” scrim that breaks down into tiny pieces of plastic. These should degrade entirely over time but on the way to 100% degradation they spend a bit of time being microplastics.
Our wool felt mulch mats come in a range of sizes, and are suitable for individual plants in pots, for going around plants in the ground, and the larger ones are ideal for tree saplings. I find they don’t usually need pegging down; they usually adhere to the ground quite well, especially when weeds grow into them then back down again, they sort of add to the matting qualities. However, if it’s windy or there are weeds that push the mulch mats up, then it’s recommended to secure them in place with pegs. When we first started selling mulch mats several years ago, there were no biodegradable pegs on the market. The only pegs commercially available were made of plastic – we didn’t want to sell these so we’ve been selling bamboo canapé skewers which did the job but were a little flimsy. I’m delighted to say that there are now some much more robust bamboo pegs on the market so we’re selling these now for pegging out mats if you need to.
