Getting more resilience in the garden with hoops and mulch
What a spring this has been. Wet, dry, hot, cold, snow, sleet, hail, and lots of frosts. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of the kind of weather we can expect for summer.
It’s made for a crazy veggie gardening season so far. My stone fruit trees are getting hammered by curly leaf with all these wild weather conditions, and my apples and pears are clinging on to their fruit – so far, so good. Early potatoes have definitely been nuked by the cold snaps; I haven’t rushed to get veggies in the garden, gradually getting them in as a warm spell hits. This is definitely a season for frost cloth and hoops to even out all those highs and lows your veggies are experiencing. More than ever we need to build resilience into our food-producing systems. This article is a little on hoops, frost cloth and mulching.
To even out temperature swings, you can use some homemade hoops (or Redpaths Kerilea 1m x 1m hoops) and some frost cloth – I rattle on about these like a broken record. A decent frost cloth will keep everything underneath four degrees warmer on a cold night. Then when we swing from two to 22 degrees, the frost cloth can work in reverse keeping the hot at bay. The goal is to stop using the frost cloth as weather temps even out.
With that said, I will continue to use the hoops and frost cloth across summer on many brassicas, especially leafy tender greens – think bok choi, mizuna, mibuna, lettuce, rocket, and so on. When the scorching summer eventually arrives, these tender greens love the shade – frost cloths give about 17% shade. We can also reuse windbreak cloth for this job.
Mulching the soil is another great resilience measure. It helps keep valuable moisture in, it breaks down feeding the soil food web (bacteria, fungi, worms, etc). It prevents soil compaction that occurs from rainfall, slows down the leaching of our valuable nutrients so our plants have what they need to grow, and stops weeds invading your vegetables. It just keeps on giving. We can buy mulches in, often used are lucerne, pea straw and barley straws. All fantastic mulches that do come with a health warning for your garden. Herbicide residues and weed seeds. So even though I’m still using Lucerne straw in my garden, I’m trying to pivot away to other possibilities. This is no easy task but worth the effort.
Comfrey grown elsewhere in the garden under fruit trees or in an unused spot of the garden can be harvested regularly during the growing season and placed on the soil surface as a mulch. It needs regular application as it breaks down fairly rapidly. Instead of taking all your flower, hedge, shrub and tree prunings to the local compost centre, they can be put through a mulcher to create longer-lasting mulch for your beds.
Green manures can be used as a living mulch. A common mix is lupins, mustard and oats. Sow the whole bed with the green manure mix generously. The green manures need to be tamed occasionally to not swamp the veggie plants. The trimmings are dropped where you chopped, producing more mulch. I’m a big fan of using broad beans as a living green manure – when chopped back they produce lots of material to use on that bed as a mulch. Other mulches might include looking at the weedier plants in our district and harvesting them to take home.
I’m just starting to experiment with Elderberry bushes/trees. They are very weedy and grow at prolific rates, producing a lot of mulchable material. Remember when harvesting to put the whole plant leaves through the mulcher to give a great mix of nitrogen and carbon in your mulch. If you have space or an unused corner, consider growing mulches for your veggie garden. Compost can also be used as a mulch if you have enough of it.
Larger pieces of compost mulch can be left after sieving your compost for fines that you might pop in a seed raising mix. Otherwise just use your unsieved compost as a mulch.
Chopped up cabbage trees make a great mulch. Unchopped, they are a good carbon source for your compost heap. No-nos in mulching are pine and eucalyptus wood chips. They don’t break down easily – fine to be used in a formal or native garden, make sure you pop some manure or blood and bone down first. Grass clippings are also good as mulch for your carrots. The number one technique for preventing Carrot fly.
Happy composting and gardening.
Dr Compost aka Ben Elms is a permaculture and gardening expert who’s been operating in the unusual Central Otago climate for over 20 years. Funded by QLDC and delivered by Wanaka Wastebusters, the Dr Compost project aims to reduce organic waste going to landfill.
Got a question? Check out @drcompost on Facebook or benelms.com
