Keeping mulch in high winds

Wyoming is windy, very windy. I was preparing for the cold front that has officially arrived today. I was given many bags of leaves and was happy to use them as mulch around my plants. The problem is keeping them from blowing to Nebraska. I used straw/hay when I initially dug up the swales but even that blew. So I knew I had to weight this stuff down. So I've got tire sidewalls on the nut trees and cement rip rap on my fruit trees and in this particular picture it's a grape and a fruit tree. We shall see! So far so good.


Anyone have any better ideas?? I did these kind of late so while I did plant them not a lot of it grew.

What about pallets? You could use them like snowfencing to block the wind, and you could lay them down on top of the mulch.

How about keep the leaves in a big pile with some sort of tarp over them until they compact down a bit.

My leaves get ground up and mixed with silt on the roadside. Brush piles collect leaves that blow by.

A permeable structure slows the wind but allows it to pass through.

In my windy spots, l place leaves first and then cover with small limbs. Rocks hold the limbs in place.
https://permies.com/t/32499/composting/Dale-roadside-gravel-pit-compost

Miles Flansburg wrote:What about pallets? You could use them like snowfencing to block the wind, and you could lay them down on top of the mulch.

All the pallets I've collected have already gone into a snow fence/wind block for my wind block tree line. So none to spare for this.

John Wolfram wrote:How about keep the leaves in a big pile with some sort of tarp over them until they compact down a bit.

Because I've been getting them 2 bags at a time for a week and this week is supposed to be in the negatives. I just transplanted those grapes and wanting to prevent death from sudden transplant and cold shock they had to be mulched and mulched well.

Dale Hodgins wrote:My leaves get ground up and mixed with silt on the roadside. Brush piles collect leaves that blow by.

A permeable structure slows the wind but allows it to pass through.

In my windy spots, l place leaves first and then cover with small limbs. Rocks hold the limbs in place.
https://permies.com/t/32499/composting/Dale-roadside-gravel-pit-compost

Our neighbors would murder me and that'd be that. Plus our road isn't county maintained, isn't graveled, is only really called a road because we drive on it. It's lower than the surrounding land and so there's no way we'd take from it. It's bad enough as it is!

I was just taking a break from adding a leaf mulch to my figs in a high wind and saw this post!
I am gathering all of my bits of hog wire tomato cages and anything else I can find to stake around the edges and try to keep them in place....and some rocks, and some logs....ugly but it is working......by spring I will wonder what I was thinking. Once the rains start they will be OK but until then they are blowing everywhere unless corralled . good luck!

Judith Browning wrote:I was just taking a break from adding a leaf mulch to my figs in a high wind and saw this post!
I am gathering all of my bits of hog wire tomato cages and anything else I can find to stake around the edges and try to keep them in place....and some rocks, and some logs....ugly but it is working......by spring I will wonder what I was thinking. Once the rains start they will be OK but until then they are blowing everywhere unless corralled . good luck!

I'm chicken wire fencing my trees in so I've got a bit of that too. lol

Would the neighbors be concerned about brush piles or a few sticks held in place with rocks?

On the road issue --- My road is a mix of silt and gravel. When I rake up the damp leaves, they pick up the muddy silt, leaving gravel behind. Over time, the road should develop a higher percentage of gravel. It would take an amazing amount of leaf gathering to have any noticeable effect on the height of the road.

I'm not in the windiest part of Kansas, but when we face 40mph winds, I often weigh down my mulch with chicken wire laid down horizontally on top of the mulch and weighed down with bricks. You can't even see it from the road.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Would the neighbors be concerned about brush piles or a few sticks held in place with rocks?

On the road issue --- My road is a mix of silt and gravel. When I rake up the damp leaves, they pick up the muddy silt, leaving gravel behind. Over time, the road should develop a higher percentage of gravel. It would take an amazing amount of leaf gathering to have any noticeable effect on the height of the road.

I believe my neighbor would get out his tractor and clear off the road if I laid a bunch of branches on it.

We don't really have silt either. We have clay soil. Not a whole lot of rocks either. I could probably run the leaves and branches over with a mower but all I got were leaves and I just applied them as is.

This is a suggestion for the future, it won't help today's grapes:

Have you thought about kratergardens? They don't have to be massive to make a microclimates, and the bonus is the soil you dig out to make the hole. Bonus dirt!

Matu Collins wrote:This is a suggestion for the future, it won't help today's grapes:

Have you thought about kratergardens? They don't have to be massive to make a microclimates, and the bonus is the soil you dig out to make the hole. Bonus dirt!

I've actually cratered a few things at other points on the property, more for a water retention aspect though. The grapes I want to trellis up the trees ala Sep Holzer. Plus I was having the worst time with them where they were before. I lost 2 to who knows what.