Mulching has many advantages. This agrotechnical technique allows you to keep moisture in the soil, reduce the amount of watering and loosening, effectively fight with weeds. In addition, mulching prevents soil erosion, its freezing in winter and overheating in summer. For this purpose, straw, hay, compost, peat, humus, etc. are used. Did you know that sawdust can also be used for mulching soil? Let's find out what impact they have on the garden soil and what are the rules for using sawdust as mulch.
Is it possible to use sawdust for mulching?
If you are afraid that such mulch can harm future crop, try to risk and blanch in this season at least one garden. You will see that mulching sawdust will only benefit. That's why many people use this material for mulching - it's cheap, convenient to use and safe. You can fill up sawdust as the surface of beds, and the passages between them, as well as circumferential circles of trees, the surface of the earth under bushes of raspberries, currants, gooseberries , etc.
Widely used mulching sawdust and in a closed ground - in greenhouses and hotbeds. This material is perfectly combined with manure, which is also used to fertilize the soil in the greenhouse, with the tops and other plant remains. This compost, flavored with sawdust, quickly pereprevaet and at the same time remains loose and breathable. However, it should be noted that only fresh sawdust is used with fresh manure, and with re-roasted - respectively, only those who are over-bred.
Mulching of the soil with sawdust can be carried out in both spring and autumn. After the end of the season sawdust can also be embedded in the soil with straw, fallen leaves, mown grass.
How to prepare a sawdust for mulching?
Use as mulch can be either pereprevshie, or polupreprevshie sawdust. The main difficulty is that the process of trapping sawdust by natural means is very long and can last up to 10 years. Therefore, for mulching, fresh sawdust is prepared in a special way before sprinkling vegetable beds.
One of the most common methods of preparation is as follows. We need to spread a large polyethylene film, pour 3 buckets of sawdust and 200 grams of urea on it , and pour out 10 liters of water on top, trying to evenly moisten the sawdust. This procedure is then repeated several more times to obtain several layers of wet sawdust interspersed with urea. The film is sealed and left for 2 weeks, after which the sawdust can be safely used for mulching.
Experienced gardener argue that fresh sawdust can be used as mulch and without preparation. This is possible only if the sawdust lies on the surface of the earth. Then they will not take nitrogen from the soil, as in the case with the introduction of fresh sawdust in the garden land. If you plan to use sawdust not only for mulching, but also as a baking powder for the soil, you can additionally add nitrogen fertilizers to avoid problems with nitrogen deficiency.
Also, many novice truck farmers are interested in the question of which sawdust is best used for mulching. In principle, for this purpose, any sawdust, except those that have remained from the sawing of chipboard, fiberboard and similar materials, will do. To wrap up beds with vegetables, row spacing or garden paths, you can use sawdust of any hardwood species. But the wood of coniferous species is especially important for garden strawberries: due to its characteristic smell such sawdust scares away the weevil - one of the main pests of strawberry. Good coniferous sawdust for laying in a warm bed. They play the role of biofuel, in the process of rotting warming the patch from the inside.