My Own Mulch Epiphanies

I’ve known about the power of mulch my entire life, perhaps more than I wanted to in my early years. When I was growing up, my siblings and I spent countless hours shoveling and spreading sawdust, straw, wood chips, and the like around thousands of blueberry and raspberry bushes, hundreds of fruit trees, and countless other fruits and vegetables of all sorts. We regularly, for example, mulched our 525-tree orchard with sawdust as just one “small” part of this Sisyphean task.

But, just like the epiphanies about the amount of sun, I’ve continued to be surprised and amazed at the power of mulch with each passing year. I’ve always noticed the darker color of moist surface soil under even just a light sprinkling of mulch, just as I’ve noticed how much more moisture the soil has under our heavier mulches. But, again, one time stands out as the strongest object lesson.

We’d been in a drought all summer—you know, one of those summers that has farmers and gardeners regularly remarking, “Can you believe how dry it’s been?”—their constant consternation their own kind of rain dance. The uncovered garden soil around the peppers was powder dry as far as I dared dig into the soil—at least six or eight inches deep. I was fretting and kicking myself for not getting mulch on them sooner—and wondering if I should break my “well, they’re going to have to figure it out for themselves” approach and start the sprinklers. For some reason, I happened to root around under the four inches of mulch around the broccoli—just a couple of feet away from the completely dry soil under the peppers. I stopped in shock. The soil was still wet—not moist, but wet—on the surface! 

“O.K., I get it,” I thought,” chuckling in amazement. “It works…but I didn’t know it worked that well!”