Mulch Mountains Are Back

The mountains or volcanoes or whatever you want to call them are back. I’m referring to those mounds of mulch that many landscapers and homeowners load up around the base of small trees. Those mounds sometimes cover as much as ten inches of the trunk of the tree. They drive me nuts.

Guess what? Those mulch mountains are slowly killing those trees. It is tree murder. That piled mulch keeps moisture up against the bark of the tree and leads pest insects and disease spores into the tree like an open doorway. Why do people and landscapers continue year after year to slowly kill small trees? It is a mystery to me.

The rule is simple. Never let mulch around the base of a small tree touch the bark of the tree. The circle of mulch can be three to four inches deep, but in the middle of the circle the trunk is kept bare. The mulch layer should start about 6 inches from the trunk. We want doughnuts not mountains.

This is not new information. It has been general knowledge among reputable tree care professionals for 25 years. The tree care companies that make mulch mountains are just plain ignorant and apparently don’t spend much effort to learn the right methods for mulching small trees. Homeowners see these mulch mountains and figure if the professionals make mulch mountains, maybe I should do the same.

Make transplanting easier on your plants

Gardening books tell us the best time to plant is on a cool, calm, cloudy day. But when planting time arrives in Michigan, regardless of the weather, carpe diem is the cry.

Heat and wind are hard on plants, especially at planting time, but here are some techniques you can use to help get your pretties off to a great start.

Soak your transplants before planting by setting the containers in a tray of water for several minutes to allow the soil to become completely saturated. A large, shallow under-bed storage container works perfectly for flats. Use plastic storage bins for larger containers.

Water the garden bed a day ahead of time. Pre-moisten potting soil by adding one part water to three parts potting soil for a moist material that is easy to work with.

On hot and windy days, covering the new transplants will also help ease transplant shock. I use a floating row cover, also called a frost blanket, made of spun polyester to protect new transplants from wind as well as animals. It protects plants from cold if a freeze threatens. This is available at garden centers. Some brand names for this product include: Reemay, Harvest Guard and Grass Fast. The lightweight material allows air, water and light to penetrate, so they may be left on the plants for several days if necessary.

Good soil contact when planting is also an important part of the equation. Those tiny root hairs can be destroyed underground if they are surrounded by an air pocket. To avoid this, set the transplant gently but firmly in the hole and fill the remaining space half full with soil. Then add water. As the water drains the soil will settle around the roots and eliminate any air spaces. Then fill in the rest of the hole, firming the soil as you go.

I prefer to use slow-release fertilizer when planting annuals, and the granules are mixed in with the last inch or two of soil fill.

However, newly planted trees and shrubs should not be fertilized until their second season. When dividing or moving plants, trees or shrubs, you can protect their exposed roots by dipping them in a thin slurry of mud just as you lift them from the soil. The mud encapsulates the roots hairs and helps keep them moist. Keeping the rootballs covered with a wet cloth while they are out of the ground will also help protect them.

Feed the soil food web

Have you fed your soil food web lately? What? You didn't know you had a soil food web? If you have any plants in soil, you have a soil food web. This complex network of beneficial soil creatures from earthworms, centipedes and millipedes, down to tiny bacteria, fungi and protozoa, all need to be fed some form of organic matter every year. If you have not fed yours lately or ever, your soil food web is a sorry group of creatures. When they are fed each year, they will perform absolute miracles for your lawn, your trees and shrubs, and all your gardens.

I know. I know. You already have too many things to remember. You can't forget to feed the fish, turn the lights out at night and put the garbage out on Thursday before 7 a.m. Now you need to provide lunch to a bunch of soil critters you can't even see.

Relax. Lunch for the soil critters needs to be offered only once a year. Spring is the best time, but fall is OK, as well.

Here's the deal. For 10 million years give or take, Mother Nature made sure to remember one very important task every year. Without fail in the fall, every deciduous tree dropped its leaves, all evergreens dropped some needles, and the prairie grass died only to come back next spring. She arranged for plants to provide much of the Earth's surface with a layer of organic material every year for 10 million years.

Why didn't that stuff accumulate over the years? Because it was the annual lunch for the soil food web. I believe that if something happens every year for 10 million years, this is not an option. It is a rule.

But do we remember every year to feed our soil food web? Not by a long shot.

Those of us who have trees rake the leaves to the street to be picked up and hauled away. On top of that in the fall, as we were taught by good ol' Dad, we rake up all the organic debris in the lawn so it is neat and tidy for winter. Then in the spring we do the same thing with our spring cleanup. The whole family gets out there and rakes like crazy, supposedly to help the lawn get a good start in spring.

What we are really doing with all this tidiness, in plain words, is taking food away from the creatures in our soil food web struggling to survive below the grass and trees and such.

We are deliberately starving our earthworms, for gosh sake. We leave our vegetable patch bare through the whole winter, forgetting that a little lunch for the underground workers would be much appreciated.

Every year, and now is a good time, we need to offer a layer of organic food for our soil food web to do its thing. I'll tell you how to do that next week.

Save water and money with right tools

Scientists tell us that plants are made up of 80 to 90 percent water. So it stands to reason they need to be well hydrated to live. To keep our gardens healthy, plants need from 1 to 1 1/2 inches of water a week, and if Mother Nature doesn't supply enough we need to make up the difference.

The tool I find indispensable to figure out how much water my gardens are getting is a rain gauge. It's not a complicated or expensive device -- just a simple plastic cylinder with calibrated markings that measures rainfall. Available at garden centers and big boxes, the prices range from $2 up. I invested in three of them so I can accurately measure how much rain falls in my full sun garden, my part shade garden and my heavily shaded garden. The canopy of leaves and pine needles deflect and hold much of the rain in the shaded garden, so they don't get a full measure of moisture in a quick downpour or a light rain even if it lasts for a couple of hours.

Water bills are going through the roof these days, so choosing the right tools to water will save time and money.

A soaker hose, manufactured so water can ooze through its wall and seep slowly into the soil is one of the best ways to water your gardens. When properly placed, this gentle, even method of irrigating ensures water gets to the roots of the plants, avoiding costly runoff, evaporation and the wetting of disease-prone foliage.

How water moves through soil depends on its texture. Clay soils hold moisture longer, allowing it to spread out as well as down. Water drains quickly through very sandy soil, so a soaker hose will irrigate a narrower band of ground. Manufacturers suggest spacing at 1- to 1 1/2 -foot intervals on sandy soil, 1 1/2 - to 2-foot intervals on loam and 2- to 3-foot intervals on clay soil. This spacing also holds true if your spiraling a soaker hose around a large tree.

After watering for an hour, I check the depth and width of moisture penetration using a Rapitest water meter, priced in the $7 range. This is found in the house plant section of garden centers and nurseries. The 8-inch metal probe is inserted into the soil, and within 2 seconds the meter tells me if the soil is dry, moist or wet.

For more information on the use of soaker hoses, go to yardener.com and enter "soaker hose" in the search box.

Hanging baskets provide color where you need it

I am amazed at how the hanging-basket business has exploded. I'm told that surveys show that the thirtysomethings among us don't have time for nor real interest in gardening, but they like having color on the porch, by the patio or wherever. What's really exciting is the incredible combination of plants that are being planted in one container. They are miniature gardens all in one pot.
The bigger the pot you can afford, the more it will give you for your money. More and more garden centers are setting up a potting area where you select a container you like, then pick the plants you want to put in the container and the good people at the store will pot the collection exactly the way it should be done.

Proven Winners, growers of quality annuals and perennials, has on its Web site a wonderful collection of eye-catching combinations of plants to consider.
Go to the Proven Winner's Web Site and check out the home-gardening section.

Remember that problems happen more quickly in a container than they do in a garden. However, if you seriously address the tasks of fertilizing and watering properly, the plants pretty much take care of themselves and should be trouble-free.

Fertilizing: You must use fertilizer, and on this there are two schools of thought. One group uses a slow-release, coated fertilizer that will last three months or more. The other group uses a very light dose of liquid fertilizer every time they water or every other time they water throughout the growing season.

Watering: A hanging basket will always need more water than the plants in the garden. With the sun shining directly on the pot, those roots dry out very quickly. In the heat of late July and August, you may have to water a large hanging basket twice a day to keep it happy. Morning is the best time to water, so if it is hot, you may have to water again in the evening.

Deadheading: Deadheading is the practice of pinching off blossoms from the hanging basket just as they finish their blooming period. Taking off the spent blooms will promote the plant to produce more blossoms as you go through the season. Many plants used in hanging baskets do not need deadheading.

Sun exposure: Some baskets have plants that prefer shade and others want full sun. Make sure you plant your basket for the correct light situation.

Mulch: A thin layer of compost or coffee grounds on the surface of the soil will give the plants a bit of a boost as they are watered.