Following up on previous post: what if I just cover my entire backyard in mulch?

Hello again!

Okay, so this *may* be a slightly overkill approach to a previous topic.

My soil stinks! Not smelly stinks, but it's just that frustrating, heavy clay, hardly any organic content, very difficult to get any sort of groundcover going because it's just hard to break through it. So I have some patches of clover, bittercress everywhere, a handful of dandelions, some wild violet. Nothing too offensive, really, it's just uneven and littered with a bunch of brown patches. I'm aware that amending top soil by just composting a ton of mulch ends up yielding a whole lot more organic matter in the soil...and instead of just doing this in a garden plot, are there any downsides to cover THE ENTIRE YARD?

Obviously uniformity of grass is not a priority for me. Lawns are pointless of water, so there's no expectation that it'll ever revert back to the unsustainable state it was in when we moved in.

Some of the yard is full sun. Some is mostly shade.

What would be the biggest pros and cons to covering basically the whole thing with mulch? I can get it for free, so the only up-front costs are a wheelbarrow and renting a U-Haul to get it from the local waste center.

Do it. I've covered some big patches of the property and just the reduced mowing is a huge relief. It's also easier to stay on top of some of the weeds that I want fewer of, like creeping buttercup, because even though they grow back up through the mulch, they're far easier to pull because the soil is so loose.

Pros: as Phil said, the decreased mowing is a blessing.

Cons: We ended up with Asian cockroaches infesting the wood chips. It's our understanding that they are relatively harmless, but we put a lot of our chips close to the house. In hindsight, we wish we hadn't. We raked most of them away. If I could offer a bit of advice from our hard-learned lesson, keep the chips away from your house. Other than that, we love our woodchips!

**We are in Georgia too, but farther south.

I watched a Youtube video where a couple covered their entire property with wood chips.  I can't remember if it was once acre or two, two I believe.  The property wasn't level, and they wanted to level it, so in some places they made the wood chips 4 feet deep.  They used 512 dump truck loads of wood chips.  The soil, and the things they are growing in it, are just amazing now.

I pretty much just told my wife (who's getting kind of tired of my proposal to do this) about the potential to level out everything, make the place way less muddy, and essentially smother out our burrweed problem in the process. She went from "geez, Miriam's going on about mulch again" to "okay, I'm down!" right away.

That's it, I'm renting a uhaul!

I used weed fabric in my garden and covered the entire area with pine needle mulch, well most of it, got a bit to go yet.
My rows are the edges of the fabric where they meet under the pine mulch. I simply pull back the mulch and fabric let the sun warm the earth. After planting my sets or the seeds germinate I push the fabric up to the plants then mulch all around them.
I have a chipper/shredder and a pine forest right behind my property...I have pine needles. Boy, do I have pine needles. Come to think of it, that might be something else to sell at the FM.
I have a few weeds in the areas I covered, but they're easily dealt with. This year I'm going to do some winter crops like cabbage, otherwise the garden would lay covered and fallow.
The pros..very few weeds, wonderful mulch, organic and worms have a chance to do their magic. I use the same rows year after year and I rotate crops.
The cons...raking and shredding pine needles is a pain in the six. It's time consuming and you need to add some every year. Walking on them breaks them down to a powder which is great for weeds on top, but easily dealt with.
I would say for your yard, cover it. Let nothing green come up through the mulch. I'd say use pea gravel and make walk paths with pavers. You could do it up pretty nice. Down side is eventually your property is going to be up for sale and all that covering you use might not suite some folks which would narrow the field of potential buyers

Michael, if your pine duff forest floors look and work like the ones I'm used to, I would be leary of removing any at all.

Moving, certainly, especially if you don't have pine growing in that spot, and would rather prefer something resembling soil that you can grow veg in.

But removing the pine duff, I have found, encourages things that aren't pine to live there and start changing the soil from pine-based to something else, which might not be good for the pine you want to keep.

I love wood chip mulch. My hugel and mounding techniques essentially involve making 3'-4' deep trenches with 7' mounds in them, that I backfill around with wood chips for stability, drainage, and a giant carbon sponge that acts like a nurse log. I suppose that they are kind of like islands surrounded by stretched doughnuts of buried wood chips, three feet deep. My paths therefore act as a soil life bioreactor. In the future, I want to mix biochar in evenly, to better preserve the structure, but also for all the buffering and filtrative benefits of having it in the soil.

-CK

I've done some heavy mulching over the years;).   The result was amazing black soil.  

Downsides included a vole population explosion.  They love the resulting soft, loose soil.  Since then a couple of cats have shown up that seem to have knocked them back, but my hostas are no more.

Any leveling you do will revert to the orginal grade after 5 years or so depending on how much rain you get.  This is fine if you plan on topping up.

Maple trees send roots up through the mulch, once the mulch rots down, you are left with a knobby root mass that isn't very nice for walking.  Once again, you can keep building on top of this if you like.  

Some people are still having wonderful success getting woodchips, but it is getting harder and harder around here.  Last time I asked the poweline trimming crew, they said I was the tenth person to ask.  Also I am getting to the point where I can't run a pitchfork all day anymore.  Just things to consider...

Gray Henon wrote:I've done some heavy mulching over the years;).   Some people are still having wonderful success getting woodchips, but it is getting harder and harder around here.  Last time I asked the poweline trimming crew, they said I was the tenth person to ask.  Also I am getting to the point where I can't run a pitchfork all day anymore.  Just things to consider...

We've asked for years and I've been signed up on Chipdrop for a few years and nada!  We've been assured several times that we would get a few loads but never do.  Once we were refused unless we paid $50 as that's what a neighbor was paying and he was getting all the loads.  The state contracted with tree trimming companies this winter to cut back the right of way along the main road.  We hauled several loads in our SUV from one of the dumping spots the past two months.  Got enough to heavily mulch my garden paths and my mom's too before the piles were shoved over the hill.  

Michael Dotson wrote:I used weed fabric in my garden and covered the entire area with pine needle mulch, well most of it, got a bit to go yet.

I'm a firm believer that people should do what they want to with their own property, so please take this comment with that in mind. I would remove the weed cloth immediately while you still can. At some point, it becomes a nightmare. It breaks down, crap grows through it, and it becomes a terrible mess that is nearly impossible to get rid of. The only way to remove it after it breaks down is to pick up each tiny piece. If it hasn't begun to disintegrate, you can pull it up pretty easily. Just my advice.

Trace Oswald wrote:

Michael Dotson wrote:I used weed fabric in my garden and covered the entire area with pine needle mulch, well most of it, got a bit to go yet.

I would remove the weed cloth immediately while you still can. At some point, it becomes a nightmare. It breaks down, crap grows through it, and it becomes a terrible mess that is nearly impossible to get rid of. The only way to remove it after it breaks down is to pick up each tiny piece. If it hasn't begun to disintegrate, you can pull it up pretty easily.

Thank you for your input! I appreciate all the information I can get. I reuse my rows year to year and they are the edges of the fabric. I've covered the walkways with flaps along the edges to expose the row soil to the sun and planting. I've noticed some of the thinner (cheaper) fabric has begun to wear, as you indicate. I'm very good about being in the garden and picking anything green I didn't plant. I assumed when I laid it down it was going disintegrate under the mulch and that I would have to replace it eventually. I had planned on raking the mulch back and laying the new fabric directly on the old then replacing the mulch. I'm not too worried about the fabric in the walkways, there's always 2 or three inches of mulch on top of it at any given time, but now I'm concerned about the rows. I expose about 9 inches of soil and you can really see how weeds survive. Those things will sprout real quick!!! I just roll them under with my hoe. I'm going to use a bit of your advice and keep an eye on how I'm using the fabric. Maybe I've put too much faith in it...
I ended up with just thirteen 33 foot long rows so it's a fair sized operation for an old geezer dude like me. The garden is fenced in and very few are allowed in there. Gawd help them if they step on a row!!! I had weighed the pros and cons of weed fabric because that stuff ain't cheap, good thing it's a tax deduction for my business. The one thing I didn't pay enough attention to was how much initial effort would be required...It's been a bear, but I'm almost finished. The nice thing is it's pretty much weed free after it starts growing and if I do find a weed it's easily dispatched. Additionally, I have a couple of those automatic programmable watering devices set up with lawn sprinklers to water daily.
It's worked for a couple of years. My job was 100% travel, but I think I'm done traveling and that was another motivation for laying the fabric. The wife complained bitterly about having to weed MY garden while I was gone. Now, she wonders why I worked so hard for myself and I didn't lay the fabric for her.... LOL
Thanks again for your input!

In my urban area, more and more people do this on their front yards. With small yards and large trees, grass is struggling anyway, and mulching means you no longer have to mow or remove leaves.

We did that last year in about a third of our tiny backyard, and no regrets so far. (The rest is a tiled patio with raised garden beds and a very small lawn in the sunnier part.) Our front yard is half mulch, with garden beds all around and just a small spot of grass in the center.

I am pretty sure that culture is moving slowly away from uniform lawns and that a nicely mulched area will soon beat a struggling muddy lawn in terms of sales value.

(The mulched area looks dead right now but it has a few ferns and shade-loving plants with either fruiting or tea potential)

I used to bale pine straw in NC as a side job. That was some really hard work. I don’t know anything about shredding it though.

Maybe adding burlap under the mulch would help keep moisture in.

Burlap under the mulch is a very good idea, very good indeed! Thank you for that idea. It hadn't even crossed my mind. Downside is worms will eat wet burlap quick, fast and in a hurry. Upside is one wants lots of worms in the garden...
The good thing about shredding it is it makes the needles smaller and more compact. Two or 3 inches of pine needle mulch is dense enough to block sunlight completely yet allows water through.  It's pretty easy to pull back from the row, add fertilizer or compost and replace it. Shredding also softens the mulch and makes it easier to work with. The pine cones and small branches go through the shredder, too. I've named my shredder Lady because she takes small bites and chews thoroughly

Trace wrote:I would remove the weed cloth immediately while you still can. At some point, it becomes a nightmare. It breaks down, crap grows through it, and it becomes a terrible mess that is nearly impossible to get rid of. The only way to remove it after it breaks down is to pick up each tiny piece. If it hasn't begun to disintegrate, you can pull it up pretty easily. Just my advice.

I wish I had had this advise before I did the work lol it has turned out just like you said. It hasn't broken down too much yet so it won't be too difficult to pick up. I'll just till the remaining pine mulch under and start over next spring.
That bloody fabric is like fertilizer to weeds! Crap grows through it, under and around it. Worthless.
Good thing is I was only halfway through this endeavour already when I first posted about it. I didn't put much more down afterwards because of your advise, maybe a row or two, so I'm glad of that.
Live and learn.

I put cardboard down first, then mulch. It’s really helpful at keeping down weeds. I use only cardboard with black ink. I take off the tape if it is easy. Otherwise I pull out the tape later when I am working in the garden and the cardboard has begun to deteriorate. I pick up cardboard boxes on garbage collection day when I am walking my dog. If someone puts out a huge box from an appliance, I do a happy dance. Small boxes need to be overlapped to cover every opening for the weeds.

Heather Sooder wrote:I pick up cardboard boxes on garbage collection day when I am walking my dog. If someone puts out a huge box from an appliance, I do a happy dance

There is a burial vault place here that regularly throws out large cardboard boxes. Casket sized cardboard boxes. Dozens every week. I think I'll give them a call. I'd bet you have one near you, as well.
Do you soak yours in water before laying them out?

I used to do cardboard, but have moved to a thick layer of leaves applied in the fall.  Leaves were designed exactly for this with broad faces that seal against each other, and all winter long the soil critters are busy under the snow working on building lovely soil.  Last fall I cut down a hedge of non-edible little trees in prep for planting a hedge of hazelnut seedlings.  I laid all their branches down on the soil, tossed a little biochar between them, covered this in about 6" of leaves and laid down a couple of inches of woodchips to hold it all down.  This spring I opened up holes in this layering and the soil looked noticeably better than in the fall.  I was fearful that the trees would sucker back up and create a significant task, but almost nothing came up through.  Now it's a mixed planting of hazels, perennial alliums, hostas and rhubarb seedlings.  It's so lovely...and such a rapid and easy conversion!  I'm certain from doing both that leaves work much better than cardboard in building soil while also acting as a great layer in a mulch.  I use leaves that I clear from around my house, but there are mountains of them available at our transfer station every fall, so if folks don't have their own perhaps they can also easily get them?

(don't worry, no children were covered in the making of my gardens!)

Great idea! Yes, I do soak them after I put them on the ground. If I plan on planting the area I put down well aged cow manure before the cardboard.