Mulch is an important part of gardening as it helps keep plants from getting too dry or weedy. Here are a few types of mulch that you can often get for free.

GRASS

Grass is one of the most common types of mulch in the free price range. All you have to do is save your lawn mowing grass and you have instant mulch. We do this on my own farm every year for both flowers and veggies. It’s simple enough to attach a bag to your mower then just dump the grass clippings around the planted rows. In addition to working as mulch, it provides a good amount of nitrogen to your plants as well. Just be sure to put it on thick, and never use grass from treated lawns or you’ll be putting harmful chemicals onto your plants.

LEAVES

Fallen leaves is another the free types of mulch that most people are familiar with. Leaf mulch works very similar to grass mulch. You can rake up your leaves in the fall and store them in leaf bags for the following gardening season. You may want to given them a run over with your lawn mower once first to chop them into small pieces.

STRAW

Straw is one of the most convenient types of mulch, as it’s light and little goes a long way. If you cut your own straw, it’ll be free to you. If you not, you can usually get a bale of straw for $3-5 that will cover an entire row (or several if they’re on the shorter side).

WOOD CHIPS AND SAW DUST

If you have a wood chipper, you can turn fallen branches into nice, wood chip mulch. Or if you do a lot of carpentry work, you’re likely to have a nice pile of saw dust. Both wood chips and saw dust make excellent mulch (just be sure the saw dust isn’t coming from treated wood). And at the end of the season, you can just till it in enriching your soil for the next year.

By Amber Reifsteck ~ The Woodland Elf

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