Mulching your garden paths provides a number of benefits—if you aren’t doing this I highly recommend it! This is a follow on post to an earlier micro-blogpost I made on the STEEM blockchain about why you
should mulch your garden paths.
I received some great questions about mulching garden paths that I wanted to cover in a bit more detail. The result is my blog post –
Why You Should Mulch Your Garden Paths – which covers why mulching your garden paths is awesome including answers to some of the questions people asked.
A big question was about slugs and mulch. I get this question a fair bit and I hear from people that they’re worried about using too much mulch because of slugs or snails. It’s true that mulch can create a moist habitat that slugs and snails like.
But despite that I actually find I have less slug and snail issues (not more!) when I use mulch in my garden paths and my garden beds.
The reason is that mulch also creates habitat for the predators that eat slugs and snails (or at least their eggs). Predators in my area include some large black ground beetles, centipedes, and garter snakes—plus I’m sure others that I’m not familiar with but all 3 of these predators hide in mulch.
Every time I mulch an area and remove the existing grass I see a big reduction in slugs—snails aren’t really an issue here in my area.
The other reason for less slug/snail issues is that mulch helps maintain a consistent level of soil moisture (and cooler soil temperature). This helps to keep your plants happy and less stressed even during the heat of the summer. When plants are stressed, they tend to be more vulnerable to pests and less able to defend themselves.
Other Benefits of Mulching Your Garden Paths
Beyond helping with slugs and snails there are other great reasons to mulch your garden paths. The blog post dives into these reasons but here are a few examples:
1. Supporting beneficial fungi.
2. Reducing competition for
water (if you’re replacing grass paths with mulched paths).
3. Saves you time by reducing how much you need to mow.
Mulching your garden paths is a great way to
boost your garden. Before you go make sure to
check out the blog post to get started!
While you are over on the blog most make sure to leave a comment! If you are the first to do so you will get a piece of pie!
The pie will get you access to some special features on perimes, discounts at some vendors, and you can use it to purchase some products on the permies digital marketplace.
If you leave a comment on the
blog post make sure to leave a post here on permies too so I can easily give you the slice of pie.
Thank you!