"The Mulching Mind"

Benefits of Fall Mulching

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Fall is the time everyone recommends mulching your garden beds. Garden calendars, magazine articles, websites, and blogs (like this one) all tout the benefits of mulching and the advantages of doing it in the fall.

Mulching in fall -

 - adds organic matter to the soil to lighten and enrich it

 - prevents erosion by winter rains

 - helps keep roots from freezing

 - warms soil for earlier spring planting

 - prevents weed seedlings from getting started

So, you're sold. Mulching is good. But, what do you use - exactly? There are quite a number of bags in the nursery or garden center to choose from.

A mulch can be any type of organic material - bark dust, bark nuggets, shredded bark, compost, compost/bark blends, pine needles, fallen leaves, straw, and so on. There isn't really one "right" choice.

Fallen leaves are best chopped up before being used either in the garden or in the compost pile. Straw may not break down fully over the winter season, but it is a great garden cover and can be tilled into the soil come spring.

If you desire color for your landscaped beds EnviroColor is an inexpensive and safe way to top spray the color you desire.  We know color is a choice or opinion and is not for every gardener.  We are proud that our product meets the Mulch and Soil Council (MSC) Colorants Sub-Committee meet the requirements.

EnviroColor recently went the so called "six-pack" test for toxicology.  The test is commonly used to check the toxicity of things like pesticides  and insecticides and is used to ensure that products are labeled properly to guide consumers use of potentially toxic products.  Six test are performed, checking the material on:

1. Acute oral toxicity
2. Acute dermal toxicity
3. Acute inhalation toxicity
4. Eye irritation
5. Dermal irritation
6. Skin irritation

Depending on the toxicity discovered in each test, different labeling must be on the packages containing the product.