Conserving Water in the Backyard: Mulch

Conserving Water in the Backyard: Mulch

 I Want a Nice Yard but I Don't Want to Use too Much Water!!

     In modern suburbia, it is very important for us to have beautiful yards. Not only do we personally benefit from having attractive yards, but the community is also saved from gazing upon dead grass and uncontrollable weeds. Most worry that they may spend too much on their water bill or even worse, use to much water and add to the water scarcity issue. Good News!!! There are many ways that you can save water and still have a beautiful yard that the neighbors won't complain about. In this series, I plan to outline many different simple things you can do to keep your property looking nice all while helping Mother Nature stay hydrated.

 

Using Mulch to Lock in Water and More!

     As part of our aesthetic landscape, a lot of us like to include little vegetable gardens. These can be huge water hoarders during the hot summer months as we continuously dump water on them to keep the plants from wilting and turning odd colors. Mulching is great way to keep these plants hydrated and also provides many other benefits; the best part is many types of mulch are free! The easiest and one of the best for vegetable gardens is a mulch of grass clippings. Take the bag right off your lawn mower and dump it out over the vegetable garden. Spread it out withy our hands making sure the ground around the plants is covered and you got yourself an insulation layer that will keep the ground moist even with the sun beating down on it. In addition to keeping the ground moist, the grass will keep weeds from invading and will decompose leaving nutrients in the soil for your vegetable plants to eat up. You can also use leaves, pine needles, and straw. For more details and other tips about mulching, here is a good article from Organic Garden. It also explains different mulches to use in other types of gardens such as flower beds.

Stay Tuned!!

Look out for my next tip on Conserving Water in the Backyard. I will be discussing  technique called Xeriscaping.