Mulch. I need some. I'm confused.

[dpm]

I just cleared a roughly 50m2 area in the front yard to grow what I hope will be a low maintenance garden. I'll be adding plants gradually, not in a rush to get that part done.

What I can't get my head around right now is the mulch part. I need about 10m3 to cover this bed and a few others. I'd love to use cypress chips but the budget doesn't extend that far ($750), so now I'm looking at tree loppers 'forest mulch'. There are local loppers advertising loads delivered for $100, which seem to be freshly chipped whatever from wherever; or there's aged mulch that's sorted and had some time to compost and seems to cost $350 - $400.

Has anyone had a bad experience with random cheap forest mulch? Is it likely to have nasty stuff in it or sprout weeds?

I can understand that the aged stuff should have settled and compacted so there will be more organic matter in the same load size and probably better coverage. I'm unsure of the pros and cons otherwise.

Help?

(also, if anyone here can supply 10m3 of mulch to the Caboolture area let me know! )

[Cliff Rogers]

The weed problems comes from using hay mulch, we use baled sugar cane trash to avoid the weeds.

The biggest problem with fresh chipped mulch is that it the organisms that act on it to break it down strip nitrogen, you will need to add nitrogen to the garden if you want to grow anything.

[dpm]

Aha, that makes sense. I was just contemplating sugar cane mulch after seeing some advertised on gumtree. We've used on veges before but not on a big area. I know it breaks down fairly quickly which would mean topping up sooner, but on the plus side that fast break down might give the soil a quick boost to get things going. Does that sound right?

[GeoffW1]

Haha,

We used sugar cane mulch once. The white cockatoos came from far and wide (I think they posted an ad in gumtree) and pretty soon the mulch was scattered everywhere, even in our gutters.

Cheers

[dpm]

I just had 7 black cockatoos fly straight over my head. They don't seem to take any notice of our domestic gardens, they seem to much prefer the bushy parkland opposite.

[Cliff Rogers]

... contemplating sugar cane mulch ....on the plus side that fast break down might give the soil a quick boost to get things going. Does that sound right?It will put organic material into the soil which is good, the microbes that cause it to break down still need nitrogen so you will need to add some, dynamic lifter is good & cheap if you buy the big bags at Bunnies, down side is that it smells like chook sheyet 'cos that is what it is. If you spread it around the plants, not too thick, & water it in, the smell doesn't last long.

Black cockys are very different to white cockys. We have some of the white ones in the area but they didn't go for the mulch, I suspect that the currawongs that live around our place chase them off.
They got at the lemon trees across the creek from our place, not a lemon left on them.

[dpm]

I'll grab a huge bag of dynamic lifter in that case. Not worried about the smell. The garden is right outside our bedroom window but compared to the gas I had earlier this week I think we'll barely notice [emoji14]

I've ended up finding just enough fresh chips to cover the big front garden area plus some sugar cane for the other smaller spots. Given it's a long term planting project it seems to be a viable and cheaper way to go. I'm not sure if the sugar cane bales will end up economical. I know the compressed packages from bunnies spread out a long way. Wait and see I suppose. At the very least the absence of plastic packaging is a plus.

Re. the cockatoos, it's all 600m2 blocks here but the parkland that has been left attracts huge numbers of white and black types, plus galahs and other birds. My almost-3-year-old son likes to sit and watch them with me from the driveway :)

[Cliff Rogers]

We get the sugar cane mulch by the truck load, 100 bales at a time & share it among a few friends, works out at about $5 a bale, heaps cheaper than what Bunnies has it for.

[elver]

We use tonnes of junk mulch. (Like every weekend I'm moving mulch 1 day, all day. I moved 3 tonnes this weekend. ) We take the crud others wont. Its free. A lot is palm mulch and random mulch. Organics and insulation is all you need. Dont believe the crap you read on the net re 'only use clean hardwood coarse chips etc'
Our local Jims bloke gives it away rather than paying to tip it. Add chook poo and blood and bone about 1 handful each per m 2 before spreading then spread it nice and thick. If you can, allow the mulch to compost in a pile for a month or so then spread. Not essential but nice to do.
We have way way less weeds than no mulching, and the few seeds that do sprout are easy to kill with a boot in deep mulch. Just nudge them over with a toe.
The end result is vast improvement organic content in soil, insulated roots and moisture retention. All that = plant health. We've done comparison plantings with fancy expensive mulch and there is no difference in outcomes.

[elver]

Oh, put the chook poo under the mulch. Water it with a hose then spread the mulch.

[dpm]

Thanks Elver. That's exactly what I ended up doing and the result has been great. I need to get hold of another truck load some time soon to top up what I've laid so far and cover the area around the shed. I've had a few tiny weeds pop their heads up in the last week or so but they pull straight out with zero effort.