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Mulching the Garden Bed for Summer

By Mavis Butterfield on June 5, 2016 · 13 Comments
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lucy puggle

Poor Lucy puggle. If only our property was fenced here she could roam around the backyard at will and putter around the garden with me. But for now, she’ll have to settle for long walks, trips to the dog park and supervising my gardening activities from the back porch.
bale of hay

I’ve been getting my garden bed ready for summer by pulling weeds and then laying down whatever I can find {recycled cardboard, newspaper, and paper bags mostly} on top of the dirt before adding a layer of hay or straw.

mulching garden bed with hay

Most of you said not to use hay. But I’m a rebel {or just really dumb}. After peeking in on a few backyard vegetable gardens nearby… apparently I’m a follower as well because EVERYONE here is using hay. So I feel like I should be using hay too. Even if most of you online are telling me not too. 😉 If people here are doing it… shouldn’t I be too? Gaa! I hope I don’t regret my decision.

So far about 2/3rds of the garden is mulched with hay. Today I hope to get outside and finish mulching the rest of the garden with straw. I guess I’ll have to wait until late summer to see which mulch works best.

garden trellis

Ohhlala! I found a dozen mini garden trellis alongside the road the other day. My guess is the previous owner used them as some sort of low, decorative fence. I’m going to use them in the garden for vining cucumbers and beans. What do you think? Trash or treasure?

Have a great Sunday everyone, enjoy the sun.

~Mavis

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Comments

  1. Amy Schmelzer says

    June 5, 2016 at 5:11 am

    I think the trellis is cute and I would do the same thing with it in my garden.

    Reply
  2. Sue R. says

    June 5, 2016 at 7:43 am

    Give the trellis a quick coat of spray paint and they’ll be cute–and useful.

    Reply
  3. Preppy Pink Crocodile says

    June 5, 2016 at 8:26 am

    Mavis!! Mavis, Mavis, Mavis! Tsk tsk. (I say that with love…but also…seriously child using hay is insane. Straw straw straw. )

    Xokk @preppycrocodile

    Reply
  4. Kristina says

    June 5, 2016 at 8:31 am

    You seem to like weeding, so….. though It would be easy for a city girl to mistake a bale of oat or alfalfa hay for straw, which might seem identical to many people. So maybe you got straw after all. Fingers crossed. Those trellises are cute. (Clearly, I need to start paying better attention to the side of the road around here.)

    Reply
  5. Felicia says

    June 5, 2016 at 9:32 am

    Check out the Prairie Homestead blog, she covers her entire garden with 8-10″ of hay and has amazing results. So i don’t think your crazy as long as you do it thick enough! And treasure for sure! Love me a good road side find!

    Reply
  6. Marti says

    June 5, 2016 at 10:35 am

    I have a big garden and mulch heavily using grass clippings and composted leaves from the previous years. I lay down a barrier of cardboard or newspapers and then pile the clippings on top. It makes a huge difference in water retention and weed control. My garden is in a spot where I can’t water so am always grateful for the water retention. The first year that I did it, I figured I would be finding cardboard all over the garden in the fall, but nothing was left except the tape that was on it. Everything had totally decomposed and I had many happy worms. I think you will be very happy with the results. And if you put down your cardboard barrier, it should matter if you used hay or straw.

    Reply
  7. Maria says

    June 5, 2016 at 11:29 am

    what you are seeing is straw. Straw is the byproduct after the field has been harvested. It doesn’t have many seeds and won’t sprout as badly. Think sticks. The sticks are hollow and hold water.

    Hay looks a lot like straw except it is the harvested product. Think wheat. Think what you’d feed the animals if you had them.

    I hope that when you come back in the fall all that hay hasn’t sprouted.

    Reply
  8. Chris says

    June 5, 2016 at 11:41 am

    If you don’t want to pull lots of sprouts my trick, for either hay or straw, is let it sit closed in a black trash bag in the sun for a week or two. It gets hot enough to kill the seeds cutting down a lot of work!

    Reply
  9. Phyllis says

    June 5, 2016 at 1:42 pm

    If it turns out to be hay, pretend that your plan all along was to let the hay seeds sprout and grow as a cover crop. People will think you’re brilliant! Keep us posted with a future update.

    Reply
  10. RebekahU says

    June 5, 2016 at 2:51 pm

    Mavis –
    So happy you used the cardboard and paper. The good news is if the hay seeds, the cardboard will make it easy to pull up AND if you have a big mess, you just put down a double or triple layer of cardboard, and viola! Problem solved! 🙂 Prayers for safe travel back to the west coast.

    Reply
  11. Rebekah U says

    June 5, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    So happy you used the cardboard and paper. The good news is if the hay seeds, the cardboard will make it easy to pull up AND if you have a big mess, you just put down a double or triple layer of cardboard, and viola! Problem solved! 🙂 Prayers for safe travel back to the west coast.

    Reply
  12. Tracy says

    June 5, 2016 at 8:44 pm

    Oh boy. You’re in for it with that hay mulch. The only “hay” that can be used as mulch without seeding your bed is salt holy, and that doesn’t look like salt hay. Salt hay is a marsh grass, resembles hay, and is cut and baked seedless. Straw is a completely different material: the beheaded stalks of wheat, and is a bright, shiny golden color. You definitely have hay. If you bought it at a nursery, it may be salt hay.

    Reply
  13. Tracy says

    June 5, 2016 at 8:46 pm

    Sorry for the auto corrections on my comment, above. It should read:

    Oh boy. You’re in for it with that hay mulch. The only “hay” that can be used as mulch without seeding your bed is salt hay, and that doesn’t look like salt hay. Salt hay is a marsh grass, resembles hay, and is cut and baled seedless. Straw is a completely different material: the beheaded stalks of wheat, and is a bright, shiny golden color. You definitely have hay. If you bought it at a nursery, it may be salt hay.

    Reply

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