Where and Why to Mulch Your Lawn and Landscaping

Mulch not only makes your lawn more attractive it also serves a variety of purposes to the health of your lawn and landscaping.  In this article we will take a look at where, when and why you should consider using mulch in your lawn and landscaping.

Where to Mulch

Mulch is a great addition to any garden bed, but it can also be placed in hard to maintain areas in your yard.  For example, areas that are difficult to mow, maintain or irrigate are perfect places to install mulch.  Additionally, shady areas that make it hard for new plants to receive sunlight to grow can benefit from mulch.

Why Mulch

Mulch serves a variety of purposes for proper lawn and landscaping maintenance.  Organic mulch materials improve your soils fertility as it decomposes, giving your plants extra nutrients to grow healthy.  Mulch also keeps the soils temperature cooler in the summer and maintains moisture minimizing the need to water established plants.

A new layer of mulch also reduces weed germination and growth as well as reducing plant disease.  Over time, mulch can also improve the soils aeration, structure and drainage.  As you can see there are a number of benefits to adding mulch to your lawn and landscaping.

Mulching Guidelines

Too much of anything can be bad and that saying applies to mulch in your lawn.  A general rule of thumb is to maintain a 2 to 3 inch layer of mulch at all times and not to exceed a 4 inch layer.   Too much mulch can reduce the amount of oxygen exchange to the roots of your plants and cause your plants to stress causing root rot.

When mulching around a tree in your lawn, you do not want to mulch all the way up to the trunk of the tree.  Instead, keep your mulch a few inches back from the trunk of the tree to prevent moisture from causing root rot and to keep rodents from inhabiting at the trunk of your tree and chewing into the trunk.  You will also want to extend the mulch to the drip line of your tree to promote the trees entire root system.

At Peter Doran Lawn and Landscaping, we offer a variety of mulch products that can be installed around your trees and in your garden and landscaping beds.  To get a free estimate give us a call at (763) 315-0052 or click the free estimate button below.

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