How Good is Straw Mulch For Retaining Moisture? 😱💖☔️ These Test Results Will Surprise You
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- Find out how effective straw mulch is for holding moisture in soil.
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How Good is Straw Mulch For Retaining Moisture? 😱💖☔️ These Test Results Will Surprise You
Straw mulch for vegetable gardens holds in moisture and prevents weeds.
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I enjoy watching your videos. I am a high school environmental science teacher and you give me lots of hands on experiments to try with my class or even show and demonstrate for them. Thank you so much for your knowledge and sharing of this important information.
Excellent video on watering with a bed of straw in a veggie garden .. - I’m going to buy straw again cause u have taught me that the straw is the secret .. I use to use wood chips for my flowers cause of looks .. March 2024 .. I have a water meter also but didn’t gauge different parts of the dirt - wow - u are terrific ..
In our country its difficult to get access to straws, I shredded leaves and twigs to mulch my vege beds. What is your comment?
Your videos always give me food for thought! My concern with straw is that it’s a good place for slugs to hide and I also worry about rodents! My poor wife is absolutely horrified if she sees a mouse, and if she sees a rat the horror is an order of magnitude worse!
Excellent results and I can get straw from neighbours for my own garden.
Excellent. I'll be using straw, and plenty of it. I'll use my eyes and hands to monitor moisture levels.
I tapped the thumbs 👍 button to feed the algorithm monsters.
Thanks
As a former research soil scientist and now farmer, I am finding your gardening videos to be some of the best out there. Thank you. I have one minor quibble which doesn't amount to much. In a few videos you have called your null treatments controls when all they are is another treatment. This mistake is common but sometimes it deludes people into thinking they have designed a controlled experiment when they have not. A controlled experiments adds additional treatments to control for confounding factors. Suppose this was a really big trial and you used a tractor to spread your mulch. On sandy soils we know compaction increases water holding capacity so to separate out the effect of the machine, you could make another plot which is mulch free but driven over by the machine so you can distinguish machine effects from mulch effects. Your trial is now controlled for machine traffic. Inexperienced experimenters are often dismissive of confounding factors to their great detriment, as unaccounted for confounding is one of the most common ways to render data uninterpretable.
Hello sir, I am from Bangladesh watching your channel. Very crucial event you have discussed with document will be very helpful for gardeners.
Love this! Straw saved me during the heatwaves as my berry patch is far away from the hose and the rain barrel was empty due to no rain. (Zone5 Wasaga Beach area). Now to figure out the slug issue 😂
I use straw to cover vegetation cloth, which covers the deep clay base under that. The cloth keeps any grass from growing through and the straw helps to keep the clay dry. If we did not use the cloth under the straw, the clay would be mushy. All this makes for a dry walkway around our planters.
What is vegetation cloth? I looked around online and can't find anything that seems relevant using that term. I would be interested in using something like that for my garden. Thanks
Those veins! Yep Im a nurse and I mist say you are every nurses dream patient lol. Thank you so much for sharing this experience.
That is funny :)
Great evidence- and experience-based information... as always! Thank you!
Enjoyed your video. Thank you for using your science of biology to bring good gardening to us amateurs.
I think you can get away with watering rather little when the plants are mature, especially in clay soils, and especially if the plants are lush enough to shade the soil. My tomatoes fully shade the soil, which is some sort of clay loam, and I haven't watered them since June. I live in Oakville so we've been having a dry growing season like much of the rest of Southern Ontario. I actually didn't mulch those because they didn't seem to need it and I wanted to save my straw for other things like brassicas. They're also not quite full sun, in fact at this stage the sun angle is low enough that my roof is shading the ground most of the day, and only the upper 3-4 ft of the tomatoes get a decent amount of sun. But they're still producing great, never wilted and never got blossom end rot.
I also have zucchini plants next to my driveway I haven't watered in months. The plants have huge leaves almost 2ft across (just the leaves, not the stems) and have produced over 20 fruit per plant, and never wilted or had any fruits that failed to form/got aborted.
Another section of my garden, also not really mulched, but in sandy soil, I was noticing some wilting, and also had some fruit with blossom end rot, so I had to water more frequently.
8:33 for the answer
If I mulch with straw and it is hasn't rained for about more than 2 weeks, the blackbirds go looking for worms under the straw and make a complete mess of the straw
I have the same problem. The robins in my area seem to be on a mission to mess up all of my perfectly mulched beds.
Use a thicker layer of straw.
Any chance you could do the experiment again without a comically large amount of mulch?
Great video. A simple but well designed experiment leading to meaningful conclusions that allows you to give a practical advice. Thanks. I will be mulching this season.
Very good info.Can I use the EZ Straw?It's so hard to find the straw
attend to soil structure rather than expensively covering up problem soil. organic fraternity dogma with mulches is very good for repeated sales of stuff that does nothing for poor soil. additionally, mulches dry out and become hydrophobic, and make the soil underneath more hydrophobic. that's my years of experience in a rather dry summer climate.
Ok, getting some more straw tomorrow! Thanks.
I really like your experiments. Do you have any videos on how to get rid of voles?🌺💚🙃
No - I just leave them alone and let nature take care of them - coyotes.
Thank you 🌺💚🙃
I have tons of dried pine needles every fall. I wonder if it's as good as straws
I've seen many other gardeners who use pine needles as mulch and they speak highly of it. Wish I had access to pine needles!
Lots of people think they are acidic - that is another myth. Pine needles make a great mulch.
Should I be worried about that straw eventually making its way into the soil and depleting the N supply available to plants due to microbial breakdown? I have always been leery of this method for this reason. Or is this only a concern with larger bark chips?
try digging some straw into soil - it is very hard to do - straw just sits on top.
Do you have any concerns about herbicides (Grazon is one) that might have been applied to the straw?
It is a concern, but I know where my straw comes from - so it is not a concern for me.
www.gardenmyths.com/herbicide-contaminated-compost/
the mulch is not thick enough; test site is to small; test plots should not be placed next to each other; this way they equalize moisture levels among each other
The mulch was thick enough to show the difference - and it was the normal thickness I use.
Great information, as always. Could you tell us the thickness of your straw mulch...on average? I use fine bark mulch because I like the look better than straw but bark mulch has gone up in price so much I need to consider straw. Also, do you ever encounter weeds from the straw ?
Thank you!
I don't measure it. It probably starts out at 6" - by end of summer more like 2" in the pathways due to packing down.
Do you get a lot of weed seeds from straw mulch?🌺💚🙃
Almost none.
I use straw overtop of vegetation cloth and have no problem with seeds.
Water, every living thing need at least a little.
👍👍👍