Vegetables are mostly annual plants, meaning they are grown and harvested within a twelve-month period. Most are typically harvested within a two to four month growth cycle. This is a quick growing phase, which can make mulching seem not worth pursuing. But there are benefits to the current crop and future crops.

• Mulching vegetables helps prevent water loss, which benefits the soil, soil organisms and the crop.

• As mulches break down they add additional organic matter to the soil, feeding current crops while supporting soil organisms. This organic matter is available to future crops.

• Soil erosion is a problem faced by large-scale farmers but can also be an issue in smaller home gardens. Mulching helps prevent this by keeping the soil covered and away from the elements.

• Mulching slows the growth of weeds making maintenance of your vegetable garden physically easier and is less time consuming.

• Mulching vegetables makes harvesting a cleaner job. Many vegetables are due to be harvested when the weather begins to cool down. Harvesting can be a messy job.

Now you know a few of the benefits of mulching, so what do you use to mulch?

• Vegetable gardens can benefit from Lucerne Hay mulch, which can be available as chaff for easier spreading around plants.

• Pea Straw makes excellent vegetable garden mulch. It’s great around Brassica’s such as Cabbage, Cauliflower and Broccoli.

• Wheat and Barley Straw is also excellent garden mulch. Like Lucerne, it is also available as chaff.

• Organic Grass hay, is my favourite option as it is loose, easily laid, can be added in “bricks” or fluffed up. It is freely available in my area and is generally well priced. Some people prefer not to use it due to the presence of grass and other seeds, but I find they are not a major issue when used in conjunction with lawn clippings or other green matter between crops.

Mulches are usually available from you local garden centre or can be purchased directly from farmers if you live in a country area. Old season mulches are ideal. You could also use mulch collected from stables or other farm sheds using hay or straw as bedding material.

You can also make your own wood chips by trimming your own yard tree waste using a commercial chipper or shredder. Commercially available woodchips are often very coarse. A shredder will aid in reducing the size of the chip, allowing for a tighter weed suppressant.

Wood chips can be purchased from local nurseries or organic garden centres. They can also be purchased directly from a timber mill or wood chip production facility.

Naturally coloured wood chips are available. These look more like pine bark or a natural ground covering. One of the down sides to fresh woodchips is they look fake. There are various ways to colour woodchips but the most common and chemical free method is with a tea stain or with natural minerals. Be sure to ask your supplier what was used to colour them to ensure you maintain a chemical free organic garden.

• Woodchips are used in the garden as an organic weed suppressant and ground cover. Newspaper or cardboard can be placed under woodchips to assist in preventing weed growth.
• They can also be added to compost heaps. When using as an organic compost additive, I usually recommend putting them through a shredder for a second time to reduce their size. This allows them to break down much faster by increasing the surface area available to bacteria and worms. Fresh green lawn clippings should also be mixed through wood chips before adding them to a compost heap. The lawn clippings will help build up the heat a compost needs as well as adding necessary green material to the mix. Wood chips can pull nitrogen from your compost heap. Adding plenty of lawn clippings, chicken manure or other high nitrogen material will help replace depleted nitrogen.
• Woodchips make an ideal covering for a garden path. They will help suppress weeds and they look natural as they decay.
• Woodchips are an ideal ground cover under children’s play equipment. They provide a soft play area, help suppress weeds and prevent the ground from becoming muddy during wetter months.
• Wood chips are ideally added to nesting boxes and the ground of chicken yards and in calf sheds on farms. They are an easy way of soaking up excess moisture and they are easy to shovel out and into a compost heap when finished.

Many Organic gardeners use seaweed regularly.

Seaweed can take a long time to breakdown especially when added as mulch. The longer it takes to breakdown the more nitrogen it is depleting from the soil.

5 ways you can beat the salt and use seaweed in your home organic garden:

• Store seaweed in a wire cage with no bottom. Leave the cage in an area that will not be effected by high salt levels. Let the natural elements wash and blow the salt from the seaweed and give it a regular wash through with fresh water.

• Shred seaweed and mix with equal amounts of fresh green lawn clippings. Use this mixture at a rate of no more than a third of total mix, in compost that includes chicken manure and hay or straw.

• Once the seaweed is well weathered and washed (a month during a wet winter would be sufficient) it can be dug into garden beds in preparation for spring planting. Using a trench composting method is ideal. Shredding is not necessary when digging into the garden.

• Chooks love to scratch around in seaweed. Placing seaweed on the ground and let the chooks scratch it over the winter months. This is an excellent way of eliminating weeds and adding extra nitrogen to the soil that the seaweed will deplete.

• Despite the high levels of sodium, seaweed is naturally high in other minerals that are beneficial to the soil and plants.

Seaweed used in the garden is not the same as the kelp often associated with seaweed/s. The seaweed used in the garden is more like a sea grass.

Something for you to try: I have had a lot of success growing organic potatoes under a mixture of seaweed and old grass hay. Lay potato tubers on top of the ground place loose hay around 12 inches thick. Add seaweed over the hay to another 12 inches thick. The seaweed will help prevent light from getting in to the tubers preventing them from going green. The seaweed will begin to decay as the potatoes grow. This hay and seaweed mix can be added to the compost heap or used as a mulch around beetroot, spinach, silverbeet or other beet crops. It will gradually break down and add more nutrients to the soil.