Fight Climate Change in Your Own Garden

From: Gardeners Supply - Friday Jun 04,2021 01:40 pm

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Adding Mulch to Your Garden Helps Combat Climate Change

Our in-house gardening experts bring you this series of tips and actions you can take in your own garden, whatever its size, to help combat climate change.

This time, it's all about the magic of mulch.

You may have heard that tilling (digging, stirring or over-turning the soil) is all just part of the process for preparing a new garden bed. But, wherever you heard it, it's time to forget it. Your soil holds 83 percent of your garden’s carbon, sequestered in plant roots, fungi, bacteria, living and dead animals and humus (decomposed plant matter). One of the best ways to protect your garden soil’s carbon-sink potential is to disturb it as little as possible. Instead, add mulch.

Image showing 8 layers of mulch: 1. Loose, moistened, aerated soil with added amendments (greensand, other minerals) 2. Cut vegetation (grass, weeds) 3. Nitrogen rich layer (manure, kelp meal, blood meal, compost starters, fresh food scraps) 4. Wet cardboard or newspaper with 6" overlap 5. Repeat nitrogen rich layer, weed free. 6. 6" - 12" brown material (leaves, dried grass, straw, coir) 7. 3" compost. 8. Mulch layer (straw, more leaves, coir mulch)

“When you layer on organic material [the definition of mulching], you’re sequestering more carbon. You’re protecting soil from wind erosion, runoff and UV rays that destroy soil life. And you also help water stay put,” says Kim Dostaler, a no-till champion, certified in permaculture design and graphic designer at our Burlington campus. “With no-till/no-dig, your plants will be healthier, there will be more soil life, and you’ll need less fertilizers and weed killers. It’s a little more work to set up a no-dig garden at first, but eventually it’s going to be less work and better for the environment.”

Dostaler’s favorite method of mulching is “sheet mulching,” also called “lasagna mulching.” To read her complete how-to, plus to watch a time-lapse video of the process into action, go to: Sheet Mulching—the What, the Why and the How.

Read more on how to combat climate change in your garden here:

Trees are the most efficient of plants when it comes to draining carbon dioxide from the air, with long-lived shrubs coming in second in their ability to sequester carbon. Long-lived woody perennials, like peonies, and ornamental grasses like pheasant’s tail (with extensive root systems) are also good options. But you can think of every plant— no matter the size — as a tiny carbon sink.

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