facilitate your veggie plants fly high , even through heat and drouth , by using straw mulch correctly .
mulch your vegetable garden with straw has a foresighted inclination of welfare . Straw is cheap , easy to put to work with , and practiced for your soil . A layer of drinking straw mulchbetween your veggie rowssets off your plants and make water your garden look clean and tidy . Although it takes some initial travail , mulch with drinking straw will make unnecessary you time in the recollective runwhen it descend to weedingand lachrymation . Unless you garden on a massive exfoliation , one or two Basel are usually all you ’ll take to mulch your integral veg patch .
Here ’s what you call for to know about using chaff mulch around your comestible plant .
Credit: Marty Baldwin
What Is Straw?
Straw is the dry stems leave alone after wheat or oat ( or other texture ) have been harvest . Once the grain is removed , the dried stalk are practice bundling into Basel . Ideally , there will be very few seeds or weeds in the stubble Basel .
Also known aspine needle mulch , pine husk is not wheat but baled pine needles . It is best used for mulching decorative beds .
Benefits of Mulching with Straw
Straw mulch suppresses weed growth . " Most annual weeds require sun to trigger sprouting and husk forestall the sun from reaching the dirt surface so it can trim down out about all of the annual weed that chevy us in the garden , " says North Carolina Horticulture Extension Agent Gene Fox .
Straw also contain fluctuations in land temperature and moisture . " A just covering of straw mulch will keep flora cool , minimizing tenseness in the hotter parts of the day , " according to Fox .
Because straw reduces evaporation from the soil surface , you wo n’t need to irrigate as often . Keeping the filth more evenly moist has many benefit . " Regulating moisture throughout the day is key in preventing physiological job such asfruit crackingand evenblossom end - rot in tomatoes , " tell Fox .
Credit: Cameron Sadeghpour
A secure layer of straw mulch helps prevent diseases that are frequently distribute by splashing rainfall . " As the rainwater droplets pepper the scanty dirt , particle are blasted into the air and often land on the underside of leaf , overspread bacterial and fungal diseases . Organic mulch [ such as wheat ] will fritter the velocity of the rain droplets minimizing the grunge splash , which prevent quite a bit of disease transmission in garden plants , " says Fox .
Developing melon , pumpkins , and squash last out cleaner when resting on a straw mulch bed . It ’s great for strawberries as well . " Some of my beststrawberry patchesare with a straw mulch between rows , " says Beth Chisholm , Whatcom County Community Garden Coordinator with the Washington State University Extension Service . " Justwatch for slugs , " she adds .
How to Select Straw
Always employ neat pale yellow , not hay . Although the two may look similar , straw and hay are different in one important feature of speech : Hay , which is grow to fertilise animals , contains seeds . If used as mulch , these seeds evolve and make a weed problem . A beneficial lineament straw contains few seed . When purchasing straw , examine the bale for weeds — weedy straw will also inseminate weeds into the garden — exactly what you do n’t want . It ’s worth asking around to recover a authentic reference of tone straw ; a local granger , nursery , or garden center can usually help you out .
Tips for Using Straw Mulch in Your Vegetable Garden
While straw make an excellent mulch for your vegetable garden , there are a few things to have intercourse aboutgetting the most out of this character of mulch .
