What you shared was also my experience, however, just a couple points: the more consecutive seasons you mulch the less weed pressure you will have in general. Second, you really have to be careful to get unsprayed organic straw. Many people are running into residual herbicides that will kill most of your annual garden. Also, as the straw breaks down it will not add as much nutrition to the soil as leaves or remial woodchips (the entire tree shredded, leaves/needles bark and wood). If you have anything germinate in your straw you may gain nitrogen by simply turning it over to disturb the small seedlings. Mostly it's wise to alternate mulches from year to year for the sake of the plant's nutritional needs. Thanks for your insight.
I’ve used wheat straw and it is great like you say. This is the most comprehensive upload on mulch that I’ve seen in a dozen years. Thank you for caring so much about your gardening craft and followers.
I have to say , my sheep only eat leaves off the alfalfa hay i give them. I found myself with all this left over straw. So i started using it as mulch in the garden beds and around the tree's. Everything is thriving! Bonus is the mixed in sheep poop in the straw 😂❤. Happy gardening. Great video
I have used both... The one time I used straw mulch, I chopped it up really fine and put a thin layer over freshly seeded pots. Within days these huge tree pots were filled with wheat sprouts. I think the key is to add a very thick layer of mulch. Also, how the wheat was harvested plays a huge role in the amount of wheat seeds in the mulch.
I`m in Wilmington NC 5 yrs now MG so you now have me as a subscriber to learn about my new growing zone. Hard clay soil being converted to rich healthy living soil with lots of amenities... full all day long scorching summer sun along with trial and error. Added to raised garden beds 4x8 last month so we`ll see how things grow. Looking forward to your videos!
I didn't read all the comments so this may have been mentioned already. I've used straw for many years now with great results. I think straw and hay get confused because hay is totally full of weed seeds whereas straw is not. I have gotten a few grassy strands here and there which are easy to pull out. Great content as usual🙂
Thank you! The difference between straw and hay is that hay is a product, and straw is a byproduct. With hay, you're getting all the seed tops, since that's the product that's sold. Straw is nothing more than the "bottoms" of cereal grains - oats, barely, wheat, etc. - after the seeds have already been harvested. Straw will still contain some seeds, but the overwhelming majority of seeds will be gone since that's what you eat when you eat grains. We had a *very* warm December, so I'm seeing *some* seed germination from my fresh straw. However, it's not much. By simply taking a hand rake, you can get rid of them all in about 30 seconds.
Wheat straw around here costs 5 or six bucks a bale if you can find it. I have used grass clippings mixed with leaves for years with excellent results and since they come free from my yard, this figures into the total cost of growing my food. One issue is that the leaves fall in the fall and the grass is collected in the summer therefore I have to save the leaves until the clippings are available.
Great video. I agree that mulch is a critical part of gardening success. Your bold statement is accurate. The benefits of composting and amending soil are reduced without protecting the soil with mulch. I vary mulch by location in the garden, but everything has a great organic cover.
@@TheMillennialGardener Like you, straw is my favorite mulch in the veggie garden. I use dried grass clippings as a light mulch when I direct seed and then add straw when the plants are bigger. Because I get a lot of wind, I often mix the straw with crushed leaves and it tends to stay in place better.
@@GardenerScott I wish I could use grass clippings. One of the few things I miss about living up north is the lawns. Fescue and Kentucky Blue makes some good mulch. Our lawns here on the NC coast are centipede grass, which is technically a weed with a wicked rhizome. When you cut the lawn, it's 50% seed tops. It's brutal 😅 We don't have much in the way of deciduous trees, either. We just have boring old pine needles. Better than nothing, though!
How does this not cause a nightmare for weeding in your garden?? my yard is also a bunch of random weeds, clovers, dandelions, those purple cluster flowers, wild garlic grass, ect.. wouldn’t you want to avoid putting those in your garden?
@@AndyP765 only if theyre flowering and have flowers mature enough to have viable seed , all those seeds can blow in on the wind anyways so i dont pay much attention to it and as he mentioned in the video it compacts down and prevents germination
I’m a new gardener. Got my raised beds set up. Filled using hugelkultur method, topped with a mix of topsoil/compost… and thought I was done. So thankful I know now to cover my beds over the winter! Thank you!
I covered my lawn with forest leaves and then heaps and heaps of freshly cut straw ( it was really long grass from the local area cut amd dropped, and collected by me.) After a few months of doing nothing, I have four inches of the most incredible compost on top of my super sandy soil. I actually cannot believe how well this has worked. I also heavily mulched all the other areas of my garden. I had some butternut seedlings in the ground for a long time and they weren't doing anything. I was going to rip them up, but the mulch kicked them into gear and they started growing !
Your videos are great I am a beginner so every tip you give has been so useful. I use fabric grow bags of various sizes and your tips in this type of growing has been invaluable. I now use mulch in all my veg herbs and plants.
Great vid. Nice to see young people taking up the hoe. This veteran gardener agrees: mulch is key, but be careful with pure wood mulches. They support very limited soil biology, most of it being fungus (while annual veggies require a bacterially-dominated spoil). Worse, slugs and flea beetles love it. I learned this the hard way, losing many crops to it in the early '90s. These days, I use uncured compost as a mulch on no-dig vegetable beds. Moving the compost from the pile to the beds frees up space so I can begin another compost pile, and spreading rough compost thin aerates it and exposes it to worms, speeding up the curing process and removing toxic chemicals. Also, the best much for trees is a living ground cover. I have strawberries under my dwarf trees, even the fruit trees, and wild ginger or Pennsylvania sedge under the larger oaks and maples.
Straw mulch will encourage a bacteria dominated microbiome whereas hardwood chips will encourage a fungal dominated microbiome. Plants have an evolutionary succession of going from bacteria dominated soils to fungal dominated soils (ie grasslands to forests). So depending on what type of plants you want to grow, you should encourage the appropriate soil microbiome for the desired plants. Your fig trees are "woody" plants that would prefer the fungal end of the spectrum whereas your bananas are more "grass like" and prefer the bacteria end of the spectrum.
You would think that, but the straw actually gets stuck together in a fungal web as well. I have used both around my figs, and they love both. I haven’t seen a difference in vigor. I think that matters most is just having a mulch layer, in general. When vegetable gardening, I think the trouble with hardwood mulch is it makes it difficult to direct seed.
I didn't realize you live in SE N.C. where I do, so this is going to really help me. I had to move from my last place and left my banana tree in the first year. Ordering another in about a week. You can get free mulch at some of the landfills also.
What’s your favorite mulch to use in your garden and around your trees? Let us know in the comments below! TIMESTAMPS for convenience: 0:00 Why Mulch Is The Best Tool For Organic Gardening 0:50 Mulch Varieties: Best And Worst Kinds Of Mulch 1:59 The Benefits Of Mulch For Your Garden 4:00 The Natural Mulch I Usually Use In My Garden 5:07 How I Use Hardwood Bark Mulch Around A Fruit Tree 5:34 Problem With Bark & Wood Chip Mulch In A Vegetable Garden 7:08 The Best Mulch For The Garden I've Found 9:05 Wheat Straw VS Hardwood Mulch Weed Suppression 13:39 Wheat Straw VS Hardwood Mulch Moisture Retention 16:59 Myths About Using Wheat Straw As Mulch 18:31 Using Wheat Straw In A Vegetable Garden 20:03 Final Thoughts On The Best Mulch For Gardening 20:50 Adventures With Dale
I use whatever is available, and honestly as long as the mulch is a few inches thick with at least the top 1" being composed of something that inherently contains many small air spaces with thin walls and minimally-connected surface area (straw, a mix of small twigs +/- leaves +/- scythed grass and/or weeds or hay) you get the absolute best results. FYI, you want to put solid mulch underneath hollow mulch, not the other way around. The reason for that is that having a top layer of hollow mulch acts like a thatch roof in almost every respect: it has extremely high insulation value because of the many small and non-continuous air spaces with minimal solid-to-air ratios and thus the heat in the top layer of exposed stems is vented within that same layer and is minimally transferred to lower layers thanks to the minimal surface contact between individual stems. The only difference between the mulch and the roof is that the horizontal angle, open ends on both sides, and loose packing of the mulch allows for free vertical movement of rain and other sources of condensed water vapor that contact the mulch, such as fog or dew drops. The main differencesbetween the cooling effect provided by sun- and surface- exposed solid vs hollow mulches that are in direct contact with the soil are: 1) Solid mulches will always capture and retain more environmental water within themselves than hollow mulches, because they have more continuous mass and similar or greater moisture-retaining qualities compared to hollow dry mulches, which is not a big deal during heavy rains but can be pretty significant if you are only getting like .1 inches at a time with several hours or days of sunlight and/or wind between such events , because a significant portion of such small volume precipitation will never reach the deeper layers of mulch or the soil beneath, and will instead be lost to evaporation before they can benefit the plants. Dew only happens twice per day, morning and evening, and the water volume delivered per square inch is very small, so it automatically counts as a low-volume precipitation event. 2) Solid mulches have more direct contact with the soil, and thus wick more moisture from the contact layer. The fewer and larger airspaces between such mulches allow for greater airflow within and between the mulch layers, which will always result in greater losses to evaporation. This is especially wood mulch of any type, as bark mulches tend to contain hydrophobic resins (especially conifer barks) that are slow to degrade and will not wick as much moisture as wood. The advantage of having lignified mulches like wood in direct soil contact is that you are providing a nutrient substrate that promotes a more "balanced" microbiome in terms of bacteria vs fungi vs protozoa. If you simply place a top layer of hollow mulch on top of this then you can get the best of both worlds, so to speak. This is both cheap and remarkably effective, because every new year's layer of wood/bark (solid layer) will compress the previous straw (hollow) layer, thus promoting its breakdown by increasing the decomposing straw's contact area with soil and increasing nutrient availability for the new feeder roots that aleays invade newly-forming humus. At the same time, the new straw layer on top of the new wood/bark layer minimizes temperature variations and moisture loss, while maintaining aeration and minimizing evaporative losses. This works every bit as well as it sounds, and I don't think that's too surprising... it's just a more efficient application of known material properties and the physics underlying said properties compared to a solid top layer with a hollow bottom layer.
Annual rye cover crop for winter. Then it dies in SC heat and becomes mulch. Turned my sand into soil after one season. Tied with chipped hardwood tree leaves chopped fine.
I like cover crops in garden, I do like hardwood mulch for trees except in times of heavy rain, which living on the gulf Coast happens a lot. I've had trees die from root rot.
I have used wheat straw as a mulch for over wintering my grapes in zone 3. I do get a lot of volunteer wheat plants growing the next year but they are easy to pull out my
I'm glad you're able to get it in the desert! It's even sometimes tough to find here on the rainy coast. I imagine the stuff is practically free in the Midwest. It's *awesome* stuff.
Very timely video for me...I'm using straw mulch for the first time on my winter garden. Thanks for the knowledge!🙂 I'm glad you and Dale had a sweet Thanksgiving Day.🙂
I'm glad to hear it was timely. Every day with Dale is a great day. We had good weather and he was in his element harassing everyone in the house for food. There is a *reason why* HOUND has become a verb!
I have used chopped organic wheat straw, it occasionally has a couple of seeds, but not a big deal. I piled it high trying to hill potatoes, which turned out to be not very effective (super healthy plants, but not a lot of tubers) but the amazing thing was for next year I now have a completely broken down pile of dirt. I'm in zone 5b, excited to grow in the much improved soil in the spring. My fall lettuce loved it too.
Straw is excellent as mulch, but as you said, the key is to apply it constantly. Every 6-12 months, placing a thick layer will provide best results. It takes years to build good soil, but in time, you'll have better and better results. Soil is like wine and cheese - it gets better with age when you do it right!
Straw is the base of the grain left over after the seeds have been harvested, so it is much lower in seed content. It will, however, still contain seeds. It's a good idea to buy your straw bales 2 months ahead of when you'll use them so you can stack them and let them get beaten up by the rain and sun to kill all the seeds and wash off/burn off any residual herbicide/pesticide than may exist.
Discovered this older video today. I am in upper NW VA, zone 6b. I went with straw on all my foot paths in the garden this year. I use a fine pine mulch in my raised beds as it breaks down faster and has led to a better soil composition over the years. At the end of the season I cover those beds with a thick layer of straw which is easily removed in the spring. The added benefit to straw over wood chips on my foot paths is that it makes kneeling for work in the beds much easier on my knees. Kneeling on the chips might as well have been gravel.
I used last year's wheat straw to mulch my new raised strawberry beds, and it IS great at holding moisture, the only problem is that I have bunches of wheat sprouting everywhere.
I love the long format videos and the second channel for digest pieces, new sub here, just picked up gardening (have a head start w parents) three weeks ago and I’m going hard bro. Thank you so much for the helpful info, love from Baja
Pretty good video man really enjoyed it. I do believe the bananas being taller and shading the wheat straw more so maybe caused it not to break down as much? Or for weeds to germinate?? . The Mulch was definitely exposed a lot more.
It's entirely possible - even likely - that the mulch being exposed in those cages for 4 months getting constantly hit by rain, sun, and freezing nights, totally destroyed 100% of the wheat seed. It's pretty common to order in compost and let the pile sit and age before spreading to ensure it's fully composted, so why not do that with straw? Buy the bales of straw early, let them sit out for 3-4 months in the rain and sun to degrade, then spread them. That's a way to ensure they won't contain viable seed and any herbicide leftover is inert.
Great video. What a cool straw/banana trick - that's awesome! Never heard the term Weed Penetration before, but my inner child kept laughing every time you said it. I need to grow up. FYI - I also have a small car...found out my local wood/mulch place delivers (great for a big load), but they also allow you to drive your car in and fill up yourself. You just put your car on a scale before and after. I bought some 10 gallon fabric pots with handles that work very well to transport, but others use rubbermaid bins, trash bags, buckets, etc. They even offer a free day once a month where everyone with small cars show up to help themselves!
Your clear explanation and full coverage of your topic was excellent! Then you even reviewed everything. Great job! I appreciate a talk that is clear and understandable without unnecessary repetition and words like “um”. I’m subscribing. 🙂
I put wheat straw on my raised beds last winter. I did have a lot of wheat growing it has been very easy to pull. I was at a conference and presenter suggested aging the bales a year before using so the seeds will die. I am going to try that.
excellent video, have bookmarked it for future reference. one note tho, at 3:27 I believe you mispoke. UV rays do not cause the evaporation, rather it's Infrared rays which agitate and 'heat' the water molecules, changing them to vapor. : )
i put a 6 to7 inch layer on all my32 inch walkways with exposed 12 inch wide beds dusted with crumbled straw bits as bed covering only water during germination and the hottest times and I am in inland CA.. love straw as insulator carbon supplement and worms galore! easy on the feet
Good content. I use wood chip for pathways between beds. I used sugar cane mulch in the past but stopped due to the chemical fertilisers and pesticides used by commercial farmers. I now cut my own Rhodes grass. Grass clippings and leaves. I am now purposely growing legume shrubs to go in the mix. I pile it for a few weeks then use it as mulch. When I use wood chip I put cardboard down first. I use cardboard around all my trees now. I cover it with some compost and grasses, as that diminishes I top up with woodchip. Long winded but I'm not buying mulches so it gives me time. BTW I noticed your figs. Not many leaves. I recently got a fig. The leaves on my fig vanish almost as soon as they grow. They curled. Had rust and got eaten. The fig kept growing though, producing fruit. End of Winter here now ( zone 10 ) so temps down to single figure Celsius. No Fruit, but producing new leaves.
I use wheat straw as mulch as well, but to be fair to the woodchips, you had a really thick layer of straw on your banana beds. If you had the same amount of woodchips as you did straw, they would perform just as well at weed suppression as the straw did.
I plan to mulch my new raised strawberry bed with wheat or oat straw, not sure which it is but is certainly stalky like wheat. Have several bales left from last year I never used. So today after watching a video about cutting up the straw finer, I bought a Worx WG 509 blower / vacuum mulcher just today to chop the straw into finer mulch. Hope it works as well for me.
That’s what I’ve always used, but if you’re paying for it and you have an option, I really feel the straw is better. Hardwood often costs more if you’re paying for it.
That sounds a little labor intensive, no? Have you ever considered dumping the straw and running a lawnmower over it with a bag on, then dumping the bag? I just did that with some old sweet potato vines, and it did a good job.
That works great, as long as you don't have recent herbicide treatments on your lawn or your grass isn't full of seed tops. I can't use the grass clipping from my lawn, because it's a Southern grass - Centipede. The seed tops are nasty, and if I were to use it, I'd have rhizomous weeds everywhere.
Atwoods in Oklahoma, 'square straw bale', $9.99. Probably still cheaper than bags of hardwood. I may try it this next spring, but I'll probably still supplement with alfalfa pellets as a fertilizer. Trying to fix the soil organically as well as moisture retention. Also, we all hear different rumors in gardening, but the one I heard is not to use 'hay' bales because there is a ton of seed in them and to make sure what you are purchasing is 'straw' bales, so maybe that's why you didn't get a bunch of seeds. If you are still having trouble with the prickly vine from the neighbors (almost a year later), something I have had luck with is Tordon RTU. Don't spray it on. It's pretty potent and you don't want it getting picked up by the wind. Instead, pour a tiny amount into a small container and use a thin paint brush to paint it on the leaves. I did that this year on a flowering quince that has been coming up underneath my cholla and killing it. I cut the quince down to 3 or 4 inches and delicately (VERY delicately) painted the stubs and so far it hasn't come back and the cholla is looking better.
Agreed! A good technique for making a bed for tomatoes or anything; double dig a trench, lay six inches of straw in the bottom. It will squash with the weight of soil on top. Before filling in, pee on the straw and rhe nitrogen in it will start to break it down. It will act like a sponge to hold water and nutrients for the roots .
@@cjboac9864 Yes, it might seem an offensive way if getting nitrogen but it's available! Forever! I've heard that the so refined in the art of living Japanese use #2 and grow very healthy plants.
I am really enjoying your videos really informative direct to the point not a lot of chitchat that means nothing. on your post video with the bananas versus the Figs those bananas consume a tremendous amount of water I use them in landscaping low lying areas that seem to hold water and they literally dry a place out so probably huge variable in the assessment
I use a chaff marketed as feed for horses as bedding for my chickens. It is composed of chopped straw and alfalfa. After cleaning out the coop I put it in my compost bins but it would name a great mulch also 😅
Wheat straw can be expensive in many areas. There is also growing concern regarding persistent herbicides used in many grain crops to prevent weeds. These herbicides can destroy a vegetable garden. I live in the northeast and feel that shredded leaves and grass clippings as economical and safe mulch material.
As usual good observations. Counter intuitive as they say. Clean centipede clippings and leaves for me. Fresh, semi composted, or fully composted. I think we like to look at the bare soil after we prepare it. Looks nice till it's rained on and baked.
Are you able to get clean centipede grass clippings? Mine goes to seed so quickly that I can't do it. Centipede doesn't like being mowed a lot, so I try to let it grow 2 inches before I cut it, but it always goes to seed. I'll tell you, don't move to the coastal South if you want a nice lawn 😂
I think you should thin your banana plants & water them more. (A lot more.) Maybe to three or four mother-baby pairs. Or two grandma-mom-baby trios. (I prefer trios as insurance to storms & frosts). Also, they look lonely. Plant some taros, ginger & chili peppers there, too. Trust me, they are friends & need the same humid environment. A papaya near the edge (more sunlight) will do great, too. It won’t tolerate wet feet as much as taro. Think humid tropical jungle- their original home. Fun tips: 1. You can culture some edible mushrooms under there for fun. 2. Tabasco pepper plants will not bear much fruits there but you can harvest the leaves. Cook “tinola”. Best with green papayas. 3. Use the banana leaves as wrappers when steaming & roasting food. 4. After harvesting, chop down the banana plant & use it as mulch. Same with the peels. Earthworms love it! That will give the daughter banana plant more space & nutrients to grow. 5. Make that banana patch a turbo-compost place. Tuck your kitchen wastes, egg shells & cartons, etc under the mulch. Let volunteer chili peppers grow. 6. Banana & taro are very thirsty plants. Fortunately, they like gray water. Put your washing station beside them-washing produce, garden implements, or outdoor shower. 7. Banana blossoms are edible. 8. Practice permaculture.
Just a note on wheat straw. Check with the farmer who grew it if u can. A lot of wheat is sprayed with roundup to kill the wheat the last week in the field so the wheat dries down evenly. It's called enhanced harvest. It may not hurt your plants initially but it harms the soil life.
The straw gets trucked in from various suppliers at most retailers, so you're going to get different straw from different locations at different times. Unless you're buying direct, it would be difficult if not impossible to tell. I think the fear of herbicides is vastly overstated, because in order for herbicides to be effective, the concentration has to be high enough to be toxic. The chances of wheat straw having so much herbicide on it that's still active and hasn't degraded yet that it could actually harm your soil is slim, and if you're truly concerned, simply let it sit out in the rain and sun for 3-6 months. It'll be fully washed away and inert by then. It's pretty common to not use compost immediately and let it age first, so this isn't unreasonable. I know the straw isn't harming anything, because when you pull it up, the soil underneath is lovely. Let it sit out for awhile before use, and the problem should be solved.
After using every thing from grass clippings to seaweed eel grass, my go to mulch for veggies and annuals is pine needles. Never a shortage of curbside piles around my NE NJ neighborhood and all for free. Excellent weed suppression, water retention, very slow to decay, permeability in both directions, and due to the barbed nature of the needle, extreme wind resistance. Hardwood mulch is better at promoting an anaerobic environment/fungal microbiome best suited for deciduous plants and trees whilst softer less compacting mulches promote aerobic conditions better suited for veggies and other annuals particularly under wetter conditions. Wheat straw would be my second choice but, it's not free for the taking at my location.
In college, I took horticulture classes and we did a huge landscaping project as part of our class. We brought in dump trucks of double hammered hardwood mulch and we planted everything from trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals in 18" of nothing but that. Wheat straw is hard to get in Texas. And what I did get at Tractor Supply in compressed bales killed everything like it burned them. Contacted Tractor Supply and was informed it had herbicide residue still in. Being in compressed bales with plastic wrap, it compounded the problem.
That sounds extremely unusual. If you purchase straw bales, you can purchase them 3-6 months ahead of time and let them sit out in the rain and sun. That'll mitigate any potential problems. Treat straw just like you would treat compost - let it sit out and age for awhile before spreading.
I’ve used straw mulch in all of my containers this season. In about half of those, huge clumps of grass is growing. When I emptied the pots to recycle it into my compost, I observed the root system of those grasses. They were taking over the pots with long, thick, and numerous roots. My solution is cover cropping and termination to grow your own mulch. Peas/legumes are the preference. Don’t let them flower. Cut them down in warmer climates or let frigid winter conditions due it for you.
I’m handicapped and have an electric scooter, I just got baby chicks so I use a large Christmas tree bag in my mini van to haul bales of hay. Their nice the feed store puts them in the bag for me and since they hold a large artificial Christmas tree, you can zip it completely open to place the bale on then zip it up, it has heavy duty straps for carrying.A strap on each end for pulling as I drive my scooter around back, plus their waterproof even though I put it in a lg tube with wheels, makes it easier to roll in and out of my pen. No mess in van or smell of hay. Also can haul bags of feed. I also carry an extra bag in the van. Got them after Christmas from Amazon they were 2 to a package.
Straw is the stalk after the grain (seed head) is harvested so it there are very few seeds. Hay is made up of whole plants & if not harvested before seeds develop, can contain many seeds.
Precisely. Straw is a byproduct of the wheat harvest, so in theory, the seeds should be mostly removed. Allowing the straw bales to sit out in the weather for 3-6 months to begin decay can also be beneficial. That's what I sort of did by using them to insulate my bananas for 5 months prior to use. The result: ZERO weeds.
If done lightly for seedlings to pop but still need shaded soils and wind protection straw will send up tons of volunteers. Key is so what wheat is great grass with loads of benefits. Green fert or actually harvesting. The wheat. Bud I plan on doing a heavy layer to stop all unwanted growth after seedling develop
Pine needles are bailed here like square bails of hay and sold at hardware and gardening stores. Long needle pine is used and farmed just for this. We use cardboard covered with pine needles and that lasts one year to be composted the next year. They do not make the soil more acidic. The yellow long needle pine tree so common in Georgia has a new use! We have raked up some from the yard and put them around blue berries, figs, tomatoes, egg plants, peppers, any single stem plant. We do water more so the water gets past the mulch to the soil and soaks down to the roots. Once watered then, this works best for us so far.
I've used straw in my raised beds since day 1. It's really good. I rarely water and hardly ever see a weed. If one does pop up, it pulls out, root and all, really easily.
Slimy, wet, decaying wheat straw, or any kind of straw, can become a super magnet for SLUGS. I tried growing potatoes in hay, and slugs ate them all up.
You may get a couple seedlings here and there, but they pull easily. We had a warm December, so I did have a few sprouts. Just run your hand through the mulch layer for 3 seconds and they all come out.
I have what’s called a grab and go bag of straw I got for my chickens and mulched my fall veg garden. I didn’t realize it was full of wheat seeds till it seeded like crazy. I’m curious to see what happens in the spring. I’ve been picking the grass for the chickens in the mean time. Otherwise I love it. It seems to allow great cover that has air in it, it’s so light with lots of life going on on top of the soil.
Throw your straw in with your chickens as they will clean all of the seed out for you. After a couple of weeks it is manured and ready to put on your garden.
My advantage and success is probably because the straw sits in those banana cages for 4 months and decomposes, getting blasted by rain, sun and freezing temps, before spreading. By the time I spread the straw in March or April, any leftover seed is long rotted. It is probably good practice to buy your straw bales and let them sit out in the elements for a few months to begin breaking down and ensure not just the seed is destroyed, but any trace herbicide has gone inert.
I have grown tomatoes in strawbales for 3 years. I started because I was renting, but it has always works. And in then I would mow it in the spring. I noticed that the best soil was under the bales and rotated. Now I use the bales for insulation in winter and mulch in summer = great combo.
That sounds like a good plan. If you let a straw bale sit in a position for a couple months and then pick it up, you'll find a ton of bugs underneath, especially in the winter. They're keeping warm, and slowly chomping away, decomposing the bale and improving the soil underneath. They're really great!
I bought straw for my garden and was somewhat pleased with it.But it did not fair well in my strawberries and I have been inundated with weeds. It was great in my garlic bed I planted last fall. I’m not entirely convinced yet. But do think it is one of the better mulches.
I went today to purchase this Harwood Bark... I guess they don't have it anymore, so I purchased the DECO BARL MEDIUM NUGGETS, they look all natural, no paint or anything. I hope I did a good purchase.
Living in Australia, we have the opportunity to use sugarcane mulch. This tends not to harbour seeds. And the problem I have found with woodchip mulch, which I love for flower beds, is that it can encourage white ants, which are quite prevalent in certain areas. But sugarcane mulch is excellent for all veggie beds.
Use good quality straw, it has fewer weedy seeds. If you use the cheap stuff, it's often full of weeds. Learned that from experience. Also, try using lucern-hay - it has more nutrients.
The problem is cost. Bale's of straw are $5-6 from a farm supply store, but those small bags of EZ Straw are $15. You'd go broke if you had more than a couple beds. Straw itself is fairly low in weeds since the grain portion has already been harvested, but a smart way to do this is to buy your straw 3-6 months ahead of time, stack your bales in the yard, and let the sun and rain hit them for months. That will begin the decomposition process and destroy seed. Then, spread the "old straw" around your plants later.
Agree In all areas! Have found the same to be true, although I did get one batch of wheat straw that had some trace herbicides and my plants showed the signs, but, my soil biological was so good, they grew out of it pretty quickly. One note though regarding mulching your veg garden with the straw. It WILL DEFINITELY draw in the snails more. (At least in my area, anyway) Zone 8B, But I just know in advance and set out my baby food jars with cheap beer and they die happy! 🤔😄
Regarding the herbicide, it is probably good practice to buy the straw bales and let them sit for a few months before use. Letting them rot some will ensure the seed is dead and any trace herbicide is destroyed. I, thankfully, haven't had issues with snails (yet), but iron phosphate is quite effective and cheap.
@@TheMillennialGardener thank you for that. I have huge piles of sprayed horse hay that is used for running horses so it is really sprayed. It has been sitting for three years and has started to decompose. Do you think that would be safe for my garden?
I've used pine straw in the past. My main issue with pine straw is I'm not a huge fan of the look, and it constantly blows away. It is good stuff, though, in terms of function. If I had a truck, I'd probably go get myself a few trash bags full. I have been collecting the falling needless my rear property and spreading where I can. I've gotten myself about 20 free gallons so far and I've been dumping them under my citrus trees.
I now have 23 small truckloads of hardwood and pine mixed chips in my backyard delivered over the summer months. But, like you, I've heard the same issues with wheat straw so I opted for the chips. 🙄 Oh well looks like the chips will have to fill the bill for a while.
If I could get that for free, I would take every pile. Unfortunately, when you have to pay for it, you have to choose. I was always afraid of straw, but now that I’ve seen it in action, I’m in love. If you’re scared, let the bales sit out in the rain all winter to rot, then use it. That should kill the seeds. Maybe that’s why I’m so lucky?
@@TheMillennialGardener Well it is "free". But after you tip the (? tree trimmers) hauling crew a 10 here and a 20 there it does add up. And good luck with even getting them started - It took me 5 or 6 years since they brought it last time. You have to run down the foreman of the crew wherever they are working and request it - and even a 20 spot there might pay off ... well it's a game with them to see who has the best "incentive" for them. 😉
@@gitatit4046 I've been offering $80 on Chipdrop for over 2 years, as well as called some local companies. I've yet to be successful 😥 Location has a lot to do with it. I think I'm too far out of the city and too far out of the way, and they really don't like going to subdivisions. For 10-20 yards of wood chips, I'd gladly offer $100! Mulch is $40 a yard. A 10-yard delivery is easily over $400. Even $100 would be a steal.
@@TheMillennialGardener That's right. I don't mind the tipping since I know I'm getting a bargain in the end. BUT the hassle and frustration of trying to get it delivered is a different matter. I guess we do what we gotta do in the long run. I wish you luck on your end.
@@TheMillennialGardener - I had the terrible experience with straw bale bought in Home Depot: it was all full of seeds. I almost killed my strawberries with germinated weeds... With EZ-Straw my experience is strictly positive. No seeds in it. I'm using free truck deliveries of wood chips as well. And free horse manure from the nearby stable. Horse manure could be dangerous, though, if they used hay with herbicides...
My experience with wheat straw was a nightmare, it filled my bed with endless sprouts from the seeds in the straw, then also you don't know what herbicides they used on it in the field. Not for me. I love your garden and banana trees. Thank you for sharing.
Are you sure you used straw and not hay? Straw is a byproduct, and it usually contains few seeds. You can easily prevent this, though, by buying your wheat straw 2 months before you use it. Buy your bales, stack them and let them sit in the sun and rain. That will destroy the seed, and it will degrade and wash off any residual pesticide that may have once be sprayed.
As far as seeing grass sprouting in the straw, its mostly just whatever grain the straw came from. It pulls easy and I just lay it back down as green manure..
Yep, that's true. For me, I never had to pull a single blade. I had zero germination. That being said, one of the biggest sources of "weeds" in my garden are volunteer tomato and pepper plants! It can get pretty annoying come July 😂
They sell that at Tractor Supply, but it's $16 a bag. It's a beautiful product, but it's the same size as the hardwood mulch bags at Lowe's for $3. If you have small beds, I'm sure it works well, but I'd go broke buying as much as I need. Unless you have a much cheaper source. A bale of straw is $5 and will have 4 times the coverage. The bales of straw will not be as nice, but you can always let the straw sit outside and rot for a few months if you want to make sure the seeds have decayed.
I agree that mulch is the most important component on the soil. It protects the soil, keeps it moist, suppress weeds, it makes compost in between layer of the soil and mulch, saves time and effort in watering, composting, overthinking, its simply dumping all rotting materials on top.
I don't think my straw is wheat straw and this year a bale is $15! But I've been using straw and wow when it finally breaks down in a mix of soil it's like the black gold people talk about.
Tractor Supply sells a bail with 5 different hay. Alfalfa barley and I forget but it's killer bedcover It has not only micro and macro beneficials but its all soaked with Mollasis.
Wheat is also considered an Allelopathic plant, meaning that that the plant releases natural plant suppressant compounds that prevent other plant seeds from germinating near them; hence such plants as sunflowers and walnut trees that have these same effects on competing plants that try to grow near them. After time the wheat straw looses these weed suppressant properties as it decomposes over time. I find wheat straw a very good mulch!
Wheat straw literally grew wheat all through my beds. It was a pain in the butt to pull out, and when I did, all of my compost came out with it. It made a huge mess that made us almost give up. I would never use wheat straw again in my zone 8a bed. It was full of wheat seeds, and they germinated like crazy as soon as it was exposed to rain and sunlight.
If you add lots of water to the straw bale and leave it for a year, most of the grain will germinate, the next year it will make a mulch with less wheat growing
Because of a lack of other biomass, I started using larger grass stalks and other stalks, bigger materials, and I'm impressed though it doesn't look that great.
Many people including myself use straw, it's an old old gardening technique thru the ages. Nowadays it's tough to find organic straw but it's worth it, otherwise you can ruin your garden with herbicides used on the grains (they even spray wheat to force it to ripen prior to harvest). Yes there's seeds in the straw (not as bad as hay) however they easily come out, much easier than weeds in bare soil! and you just lay them on top of the straw where they shrivel up and add a bit of nitrogen.
You said theres only ONE drawback but I read so much about mulches in the past week and the reason I'm afraid to use organic mulch is b/c it holds moisture which is great for everything you mentioned, except b/c of that wonderful moisture, underneath it is a great place for insects and since that's a food source for rodents ( mice & rats ) it attracts them .. Also its a cool moist place underneath the mulch for the mice to make they're nests for the hundreds of babies they will be giving birth to all summer .. Since I'm so terrified of attracting these types of rodends, I'm too worried now to you use it .. I did though give your vid a 👍 as I did enjoy it and can see you on w what you're doing in the garden .. Looking forward to watching more and if you read this comment and you know about keeping insects such as termites and rodents such as mice/rats away, please make a video on that .. Rats were never a problem here in Ontario Canada but they sure are now. 😟
I been using pine needles to cover my plants 🪴 no problem free for the taking and it works good for putting around my blueberry bush. Keeping my plants cool is top priority here in hot Florida. 🔥
What you shared was also my experience, however, just a couple points: the more consecutive seasons you mulch the less weed pressure you will have in general. Second, you really have to be careful to get unsprayed organic straw. Many people are running into residual herbicides that will kill most of your annual garden. Also, as the straw breaks down it will not add as much nutrition to the soil as leaves or remial woodchips (the entire tree shredded, leaves/needles bark and wood).
If you have anything germinate in your straw you may gain nitrogen by simply turning it over to disturb the small seedlings.
Mostly it's wise to alternate mulches from year to year for the sake of the plant's nutritional needs.
Thanks for your insight.
I’ve used wheat straw and it is great like you say. This is the most comprehensive upload on mulch that I’ve seen in a dozen years. Thank you for caring so much about your gardening craft and followers.
Thank you! I was getting nervous, because the video was getting pretty long. Sometimes, you don't realize how long you film 😆
I have to say , my sheep only eat leaves off the alfalfa hay i give them. I found myself with all this left over straw. So i started using it as mulch in the garden beds and around the tree's. Everything is thriving! Bonus is the mixed in sheep poop in the straw 😂❤. Happy gardening. Great video
I have used both... The one time I used straw mulch, I chopped it up really fine and put a thin layer over freshly seeded pots. Within days these huge tree pots were filled with wheat sprouts. I think the key is to add a very thick layer of mulch. Also, how the wheat was harvested plays a huge role in the amount of wheat seeds in the mulch.
Wheat will be like gold shortly there is a world shortage coming by winter, you might want to encourage it to grow !
I`m in Wilmington NC 5 yrs now MG so you now have me as a subscriber to learn about my new growing zone. Hard clay soil being converted to rich healthy living soil with lots of amenities... full all day long scorching summer sun along with trial and error. Added to raised garden beds 4x8 last month so we`ll see how things grow. Looking forward to your videos!
I didn't read all the comments so this may have been mentioned already. I've used straw for many years now with great results. I think straw and hay get confused because hay is totally full of weed seeds whereas straw is not. I have gotten a few grassy strands here and there which are easy to pull out. Great content as usual🙂
Thank you! The difference between straw and hay is that hay is a product, and straw is a byproduct. With hay, you're getting all the seed tops, since that's the product that's sold. Straw is nothing more than the "bottoms" of cereal grains - oats, barely, wheat, etc. - after the seeds have already been harvested. Straw will still contain some seeds, but the overwhelming majority of seeds will be gone since that's what you eat when you eat grains. We had a *very* warm December, so I'm seeing *some* seed germination from my fresh straw. However, it's not much. By simply taking a hand rake, you can get rid of them all in about 30 seconds.
Think straw does better job protecting conserving and decays faster building soil
Wheat straw around here costs 5 or six bucks a bale if you can find it. I have used grass clippings mixed with leaves for years with excellent results and since they come free from my yard, this figures into the total cost of growing my food. One issue is that the leaves fall in the fall and the grass is collected in the summer therefore I have to save the leaves until the clippings are available.
Leaves also contain a lot of trace minerals being tree roots are so long and have a wide reach.
This year it’s $7.95-$9.95/bale. Huge price jump.
Great video. I agree that mulch is a critical part of gardening success. Your bold statement is accurate. The benefits of composting and amending soil are reduced without protecting the soil with mulch. I vary mulch by location in the garden, but everything has a great organic cover.
Thanks! What's your favorite mulch for your vegetable garden? It's always tough to deal with mulch in the garden when direct-seeding.
@@TheMillennialGardener Like you, straw is my favorite mulch in the veggie garden. I use dried grass clippings as a light mulch when I direct seed and then add straw when the plants are bigger. Because I get a lot of wind, I often mix the straw with crushed leaves and it tends to stay in place better.
@@GardenerScott I wish I could use grass clippings. One of the few things I miss about living up north is the lawns. Fescue and Kentucky Blue makes some good mulch. Our lawns here on the NC coast are centipede grass, which is technically a weed with a wicked rhizome. When you cut the lawn, it's 50% seed tops. It's brutal 😅 We don't have much in the way of deciduous trees, either. We just have boring old pine needles. Better than nothing, though!
My “ lawn” is made of white clover, wild violets, weeds and grass. It makes the best mulch I have ever used!
Do you ever have a weed seed problem in your garden? I'm weighing my options and strongly considering using grass mulch
How does this not cause a nightmare for weeding in your garden?? my yard is also a bunch of random weeds, clovers, dandelions, those purple cluster flowers, wild garlic grass, ect.. wouldn’t you want to avoid putting those in your garden?
@@AndyP765 only if theyre flowering and have flowers mature enough to have viable seed , all those seeds can blow in on the wind anyways so i dont pay much attention to it and as he mentioned in the video it compacts down and prevents germination
I’m a new gardener. Got my raised beds set up. Filled using hugelkultur method, topped with a mix of topsoil/compost… and thought I was done. So thankful I know now to cover my beds over the winter!
Thank you!
I covered my lawn with forest leaves and then heaps and heaps of freshly cut straw ( it was really long grass from the local area cut amd dropped, and collected by me.) After a few months of doing nothing, I have four inches of the most incredible compost on top of my super sandy soil. I actually cannot believe how well this has worked. I also heavily mulched all the other areas of my garden. I had some butternut seedlings in the ground for a long time and they weren't doing anything. I was going to rip them up, but the mulch kicked them into gear and they started growing !
Thanks
Thank you so much for your support and generosity! I really appreciate it ❤
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your support and generosity! I really appreciate it ❤
Your videos are great I am a beginner so every tip you give has been so useful. I use fabric grow bags of various sizes and your tips in this type of growing has been invaluable. I now use mulch in all my veg herbs and plants.
Me too. I like grow bags and straw.
Mulch is important. What I can afford and is available is our own grass clippings (never chemicals in our property).
Grass clippings work well and it’s free 👍
Do you put fresh clippings on your beds or dry them out first?
@@AutumnSeaveyHicks Mine are dried out first.
@@SimplyCanuckFarming Thanks so much!
That grass clipping will also add nitrogen too.
Great vid. Nice to see young people taking up the hoe. This veteran gardener agrees: mulch is key, but be careful with pure wood mulches. They support very limited soil biology, most of it being fungus (while annual veggies require a bacterially-dominated spoil). Worse, slugs and flea beetles love it. I learned this the hard way, losing many crops to it in the early '90s. These days, I use uncured compost as a mulch on no-dig vegetable beds. Moving the compost from the pile to the beds frees up space so I can begin another compost pile, and spreading rough compost thin aerates it and exposes it to worms, speeding up the curing process and removing toxic chemicals.
Also, the best much for trees is a living ground cover. I have strawberries under my dwarf trees, even the fruit trees, and wild ginger or Pennsylvania sedge under the larger oaks and maples.
Is the uncured compost not tying up the nitrogen in the soil?
@@y0nd3r probably is
You’re a very good teacher. Thank you!
I appreciate that! You're welcome!
I use mulched leaves on top of the straw…. Stops the straw seed from germinating! I’m a big user of straw. I agree with your analysis!
We buy 6-8 straw bales for Halloween decor.. I keep them after the Holiday and use them in the spring time for my garden.
Straw mulch will encourage a bacteria dominated microbiome whereas hardwood chips will encourage a fungal dominated microbiome. Plants have an evolutionary succession of going from bacteria dominated soils to fungal dominated soils (ie grasslands to forests). So depending on what type of plants you want to grow, you should encourage the appropriate soil microbiome for the desired plants. Your fig trees are "woody" plants that would prefer the fungal end of the spectrum whereas your bananas are more "grass like" and prefer the bacteria end of the spectrum.
You would think that, but the straw actually gets stuck together in a fungal web as well. I have used both around my figs, and they love both. I haven’t seen a difference in vigor. I think that matters most is just having a mulch layer, in general. When vegetable gardening, I think the trouble with hardwood mulch is it makes it difficult to direct seed.
@@TheMillennialGardener ❤
I didn't realize you live in SE N.C. where I do, so this is going to really help me. I had to move from my last place and left my banana tree in the first year. Ordering another in about a week. You can get free mulch at some of the landfills also.
What’s your favorite mulch to use in your garden and around your trees? Let us know in the comments below! TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 Why Mulch Is The Best Tool For Organic Gardening
0:50 Mulch Varieties: Best And Worst Kinds Of Mulch
1:59 The Benefits Of Mulch For Your Garden
4:00 The Natural Mulch I Usually Use In My Garden
5:07 How I Use Hardwood Bark Mulch Around A Fruit Tree
5:34 Problem With Bark & Wood Chip Mulch In A Vegetable Garden
7:08 The Best Mulch For The Garden I've Found
9:05 Wheat Straw VS Hardwood Mulch Weed Suppression
13:39 Wheat Straw VS Hardwood Mulch Moisture Retention
16:59 Myths About Using Wheat Straw As Mulch
18:31 Using Wheat Straw In A Vegetable Garden
20:03 Final Thoughts On The Best Mulch For Gardening
20:50 Adventures With Dale
All the wood chips are good and straw is well. I’m hesitant using hay.
I use whatever is available, and honestly as long as the mulch is a few inches thick with at least the top 1" being composed of something that inherently contains many small air spaces with thin walls and minimally-connected surface area (straw, a mix of small twigs +/- leaves +/- scythed grass and/or weeds or hay) you get the absolute best results.
FYI, you want to put solid mulch underneath hollow mulch, not the other way around.
The reason for that is that having a top layer of hollow mulch acts like a thatch roof in almost every respect: it has extremely high insulation value because of the many small and non-continuous air spaces with minimal solid-to-air ratios and thus the heat in the top layer of exposed stems is vented within that same layer and is minimally transferred to lower layers thanks to the minimal surface contact between individual stems. The only difference between the mulch and the roof is that the horizontal angle, open ends on both sides, and loose packing of the mulch allows for free vertical movement of rain and other sources of condensed water vapor that contact the mulch, such as fog or dew drops.
The main differencesbetween the cooling effect provided by sun- and surface- exposed solid vs hollow mulches that are in direct contact with the soil are:
1) Solid mulches will always capture and retain more environmental water within themselves than hollow mulches, because they have more continuous mass and similar or greater moisture-retaining qualities compared to hollow dry mulches, which is not a big deal during heavy rains but can be pretty significant if you are only getting like .1 inches at a time with several hours or days of sunlight and/or wind between such events , because a significant portion of such small volume precipitation will never reach the deeper layers of mulch or the soil beneath, and will instead be lost to evaporation before they can benefit the plants. Dew only happens twice per day, morning and evening, and the water volume delivered per square inch is very small, so it automatically counts as a low-volume precipitation event.
2) Solid mulches have more direct contact with the soil, and thus wick more moisture from the contact layer. The fewer and larger airspaces between such mulches allow for greater airflow within and between the mulch layers, which will always result in greater losses to evaporation. This is especially wood mulch of any type, as bark mulches tend to contain hydrophobic resins (especially conifer barks) that are slow to degrade and will not wick as much moisture as wood.
The advantage of having lignified mulches like wood in direct soil contact is that you are providing a nutrient substrate that promotes a more "balanced" microbiome in terms of bacteria vs fungi vs protozoa.
If you simply place a top layer of hollow mulch on top of this then you can get the best of both worlds, so to speak.
This is both cheap and remarkably effective, because every new year's layer of wood/bark (solid layer) will compress the previous straw (hollow) layer, thus promoting its breakdown by increasing the decomposing straw's contact area with soil and increasing nutrient availability for the new feeder roots that aleays invade newly-forming humus.
At the same time, the new straw layer on top of the new wood/bark layer minimizes temperature variations and moisture loss, while maintaining aeration and minimizing evaporative losses.
This works every bit as well as it sounds, and I don't think that's too surprising... it's just a more efficient application of known material properties and the physics underlying said properties compared to a solid top layer with a hollow bottom layer.
Annual rye cover crop for winter. Then it dies in SC heat and becomes mulch. Turned my sand into soil after one season. Tied with chipped hardwood tree leaves chopped fine.
We use chipped hardwoods. We have a plethora of Black Locust that coppices and grows back quickly. Our worms, chickens, and soil bacteria love it.
I like cover crops in garden, I do like hardwood mulch for trees except in times of heavy rain, which living on the gulf Coast happens a lot. I've had trees die from root rot.
I have used wheat straw as a mulch for over wintering my grapes in zone 3. I do get a lot of volunteer wheat plants growing the next year but they are easy to pull out my
I live in in the desert wheat straw mulch has been a miracle for my trees !
I'm glad you're able to get it in the desert! It's even sometimes tough to find here on the rainy coast. I imagine the stuff is practically free in the Midwest. It's *awesome* stuff.
Very timely video for me...I'm using straw mulch for the first time on my winter garden. Thanks for the knowledge!🙂 I'm glad you and Dale had a sweet Thanksgiving Day.🙂
I'm glad to hear it was timely. Every day with Dale is a great day. We had good weather and he was in his element harassing everyone in the house for food. There is a *reason why* HOUND has become a verb!
I have used chopped organic wheat straw, it occasionally has a couple of seeds, but not a big deal. I piled it high trying to hill potatoes, which turned out to be not very effective (super healthy plants, but not a lot of tubers) but the amazing thing was for next year I now have a completely broken down pile of dirt. I'm in zone 5b, excited to grow in the much improved soil in the spring. My fall lettuce loved it too.
Straw is excellent as mulch, but as you said, the key is to apply it constantly. Every 6-12 months, placing a thick layer will provide best results. It takes years to build good soil, but in time, you'll have better and better results. Soil is like wine and cheese - it gets better with age when you do it right!
Many people mistake hay for straw. You are much more likely to have seeds sprout from hay than you are from straw. Great video!
Straw is the base of the grain left over after the seeds have been harvested, so it is much lower in seed content. It will, however, still contain seeds. It's a good idea to buy your straw bales 2 months ahead of when you'll use them so you can stack them and let them get beaten up by the rain and sun to kill all the seeds and wash off/burn off any residual herbicide/pesticide than may exist.
Discovered this older video today.
I am in upper NW VA, zone 6b. I went with straw on all my foot paths in the garden this year. I use a fine pine mulch in my raised beds as it breaks down faster and has led to a better soil composition over the years. At the end of the season I cover those beds with a thick layer of straw which is easily removed in the spring.
The added benefit to straw over wood chips on my foot paths is that it makes kneeling for work in the beds much easier on my knees. Kneeling on the chips might as well have been gravel.
I used last year's wheat straw to mulch my new raised strawberry beds, and it IS great at holding moisture, the only problem is that I have bunches of wheat sprouting everywhere.
Exactly!
JUICE it ! wheat juice is awesome for us & very expensive now. or if you have pets they will like it.
I love the long format videos and the second channel for digest pieces, new sub here, just picked up gardening (have a head start w parents) three weeks ago and I’m going hard bro. Thank you so much for the helpful info, love from Baja
Thank you! I'm so happy to hear you're enjoying the channels! Thank you for watching.
Pretty good video man really enjoyed it. I do believe the bananas being taller and shading the wheat straw more so maybe caused it not to break down as much? Or for weeds to germinate?? . The Mulch was definitely exposed a lot more.
It's entirely possible - even likely - that the mulch being exposed in those cages for 4 months getting constantly hit by rain, sun, and freezing nights, totally destroyed 100% of the wheat seed. It's pretty common to order in compost and let the pile sit and age before spreading to ensure it's fully composted, so why not do that with straw? Buy the bales of straw early, let them sit out for 3-4 months in the rain and sun to degrade, then spread them. That's a way to ensure they won't contain viable seed and any herbicide leftover is inert.
Great video. What a cool straw/banana trick - that's awesome! Never heard the term Weed Penetration before, but my inner child kept laughing every time you said it. I need to grow up.
FYI - I also have a small car...found out my local wood/mulch place delivers (great for a big load), but they also allow you to drive your car in and fill up yourself. You just put your car on a scale before and after. I bought some 10 gallon fabric pots with handles that work very well to transport, but others use rubbermaid bins, trash bags, buckets, etc. They even offer a free day once a month where everyone with small cars show up to help themselves!
Your clear explanation and full coverage of your topic was excellent! Then you even reviewed everything. Great job! I appreciate a talk that is clear and understandable without unnecessary repetition and words like “um”. I’m subscribing. 🙂
I so agree! I hate ums, uhs, and you-knows. He is articulate
I put wheat straw on my raised beds last winter. I did have a lot of wheat growing it has been very easy to pull. I was at a conference and presenter suggested aging the bales a year before using so the seeds will die. I am going to try that.
excellent video, have bookmarked it for future reference.
one note tho, at 3:27 I believe you mispoke. UV rays do not cause the evaporation, rather it's Infrared rays which agitate and 'heat' the water molecules, changing them to vapor. : )
Thank you MG for this info! Hi Dale! 😊👍
Dale says hi! He's nice and warm in his PJ's. It's cold here this morning 🥶
This was great! Your clear explanation has been incredibly useful! Thank you!
Watching with subtitles, they make so sense, have a look. I’ll have to watch another time.
RUclips makes the subtitles with speech recognition. For videos that have a lot of nouns or uncommon words, they're often a mess.
Remember Clover is a nitrogen fixer & is helpful in soil regeneration.
i put a 6 to7 inch layer on all my32 inch walkways with exposed 12 inch wide beds dusted with crumbled straw bits as bed covering only water during germination and the hottest times and I am in inland CA.. love straw as insulator carbon supplement and worms galore! easy on the feet
Good content. I use wood chip for pathways between beds.
I used sugar cane mulch in the past but stopped due to the chemical fertilisers and pesticides used by commercial farmers.
I now cut my own Rhodes grass. Grass clippings and leaves.
I am now purposely growing legume shrubs to go in the mix.
I pile it for a few weeks then use it as mulch.
When I use wood chip I put cardboard down first. I use cardboard around all my trees now. I cover it with some compost and grasses, as that diminishes I top up with woodchip. Long winded but I'm not buying mulches so it gives me time.
BTW I noticed your figs. Not many leaves. I recently got a fig. The leaves on my fig vanish almost as soon as they grow. They curled. Had rust and got eaten. The fig kept growing though, producing fruit.
End of Winter here now ( zone 10 ) so temps down to single figure Celsius. No Fruit, but producing new leaves.
I use wheat straw as mulch as well, but to be fair to the woodchips, you had a really thick layer of straw on your banana beds. If you had the same amount of woodchips as you did straw, they would perform just as well at weed suppression as the straw did.
I plan to mulch my new raised strawberry bed with wheat or oat straw, not sure which it is but is certainly stalky like wheat. Have several bales left from last year I never used. So today after watching a video about cutting up the straw finer, I bought a Worx WG 509 blower / vacuum mulcher just today to chop the straw into finer mulch. Hope it works as well for me.
Hardwood bark mulch it's all I use I'm happy with it. Straw mulch for strawberry plants.
That’s what I’ve always used, but if you’re paying for it and you have an option, I really feel the straw is better. Hardwood often costs more if you’re paying for it.
I also use wheat straw. I go one step further I have a old paper cutter and I cut the straw in 2 inch pieces and put it around the plants
That sounds a little labor intensive, no? Have you ever considered dumping the straw and running a lawnmower over it with a bag on, then dumping the bag? I just did that with some old sweet potato vines, and it did a good job.
Wonderful video as usual👍
Thank you! I appreciate it!
We use dried out grass clippings to maintain moisture in the soil in summer heat. Great info 👍
That works great, as long as you don't have recent herbicide treatments on your lawn or your grass isn't full of seed tops. I can't use the grass clipping from my lawn, because it's a Southern grass - Centipede. The seed tops are nasty, and if I were to use it, I'd have rhizomous weeds everywhere.
@@TheMillennialGardener Good point, we do not use herbicides on the lawn!
That is so brilliant what you did with your banana trees! I'm in 8a too, so I have hope now :)
Atwoods in Oklahoma, 'square straw bale', $9.99. Probably still cheaper than bags of hardwood. I may try it this next spring, but I'll probably still supplement with alfalfa pellets as a fertilizer. Trying to fix the soil organically as well as moisture retention.
Also, we all hear different rumors in gardening, but the one I heard is not to use 'hay' bales because there is a ton of seed in them and to make sure what you are purchasing is 'straw' bales, so maybe that's why you didn't get a bunch of seeds.
If you are still having trouble with the prickly vine from the neighbors (almost a year later), something I have had luck with is Tordon RTU. Don't spray it on. It's pretty potent and you don't want it getting picked up by the wind. Instead, pour a tiny amount into a small container and use a thin paint brush to paint it on the leaves. I did that this year on a flowering quince that has been coming up underneath my cholla and killing it. I cut the quince down to 3 or 4 inches and delicately (VERY delicately) painted the stubs and so far it hasn't come back and the cholla is looking better.
Agreed! A good technique for making a bed for tomatoes or anything; double dig a trench, lay six inches of straw in the bottom. It will squash with the weight of soil on top. Before filling in, pee on the straw and rhe nitrogen in it will start to break it down. It will act like a sponge to hold water and nutrients for the roots .
People might not like your comments, 😂 BUT…. You are correct!
@@cjboac9864 Yes, it might seem an offensive way if getting nitrogen but it's available! Forever! I've heard that the so refined in the art of living Japanese use #2 and grow very healthy plants.
Err, maybe do that at night though so that your neighbors don't call the police because of you peeing outside.
I am really enjoying your videos really informative direct to the point not a lot of chitchat that means nothing. on your post video with the bananas versus the Figs those bananas consume a tremendous amount of water I use them in landscaping low lying areas that seem to hold water and they literally dry a place out so probably huge variable in the assessment
I use a chaff marketed as feed for horses as bedding for my chickens. It is composed of chopped straw and alfalfa. After cleaning out the coop I put it in my compost bins but it would name a great mulch also
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Very helpful. Thanks for sharing.I appreciate it very much.
Wheat straw can be expensive in many areas. There is also growing concern regarding persistent herbicides used in many grain crops to prevent weeds. These herbicides can destroy a vegetable garden. I live in the northeast and feel that shredded leaves and grass clippings as economical and safe mulch material.
As usual good observations. Counter intuitive as they say. Clean centipede clippings and leaves for me. Fresh, semi composted, or fully composted. I think we like to look at the bare soil after we prepare it. Looks nice till it's rained on and baked.
Are you able to get clean centipede grass clippings? Mine goes to seed so quickly that I can't do it. Centipede doesn't like being mowed a lot, so I try to let it grow 2 inches before I cut it, but it always goes to seed. I'll tell you, don't move to the coastal South if you want a nice lawn 😂
I think you should thin your banana plants & water them more. (A lot more.) Maybe to three or four mother-baby pairs. Or two grandma-mom-baby trios. (I prefer trios as insurance to storms & frosts).
Also, they look lonely. Plant some taros, ginger & chili peppers there, too. Trust me, they are friends & need the same humid environment.
A papaya near the edge (more sunlight) will do great, too. It won’t tolerate wet feet as much as taro.
Think humid tropical jungle- their original home.
Fun tips:
1. You can culture some edible mushrooms under there for fun.
2. Tabasco pepper plants will not bear much fruits there but you can harvest the leaves. Cook “tinola”. Best with green papayas.
3. Use the banana leaves as wrappers when steaming & roasting food.
4. After harvesting, chop down the banana plant & use it as mulch. Same with the peels. Earthworms love it! That will give the daughter banana plant more space & nutrients to grow.
5. Make that banana patch a turbo-compost place. Tuck your kitchen wastes, egg shells & cartons, etc under the mulch. Let volunteer chili peppers grow.
6. Banana & taro are very thirsty plants. Fortunately, they like gray water. Put your washing station beside them-washing produce, garden implements, or outdoor shower.
7. Banana blossoms are edible.
8. Practice permaculture.
Just a note on wheat straw. Check with the farmer who grew it if u can. A lot of wheat is sprayed with roundup to kill the wheat the last week in the field so the wheat dries down evenly. It's called enhanced harvest. It may not hurt your plants initially but it harms the soil life.
The straw gets trucked in from various suppliers at most retailers, so you're going to get different straw from different locations at different times. Unless you're buying direct, it would be difficult if not impossible to tell. I think the fear of herbicides is vastly overstated, because in order for herbicides to be effective, the concentration has to be high enough to be toxic. The chances of wheat straw having so much herbicide on it that's still active and hasn't degraded yet that it could actually harm your soil is slim, and if you're truly concerned, simply let it sit out in the rain and sun for 3-6 months. It'll be fully washed away and inert by then. It's pretty common to not use compost immediately and let it age first, so this isn't unreasonable. I know the straw isn't harming anything, because when you pull it up, the soil underneath is lovely. Let it sit out for awhile before use, and the problem should be solved.
Not so with grazon, it overt persistent
@@TheMillennialGardener please do research on Grazon
Doesn’t easily break down
After using every thing from grass clippings to seaweed eel grass, my go to mulch for veggies and annuals is pine needles. Never a shortage of curbside piles around my NE NJ neighborhood and all for free. Excellent weed suppression, water retention, very slow to decay, permeability in both directions, and due to the barbed nature of the needle, extreme wind resistance. Hardwood mulch is better at promoting an anaerobic environment/fungal microbiome best suited for deciduous plants and trees whilst softer less compacting mulches promote aerobic conditions better suited for veggies and other annuals particularly under wetter conditions. Wheat straw would be my second choice but, it's not free for the taking at my location.
In college, I took horticulture classes and we did a huge landscaping project as part of our class. We brought in dump trucks of double hammered hardwood mulch and we planted everything from trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals in 18" of nothing but that. Wheat straw is hard to get in Texas. And what I did get at Tractor Supply in compressed bales killed everything like it burned them. Contacted Tractor Supply and was informed it had herbicide residue still in. Being in compressed bales with plastic wrap, it compounded the problem.
That sounds extremely unusual. If you purchase straw bales, you can purchase them 3-6 months ahead of time and let them sit out in the rain and sun. That'll mitigate any potential problems. Treat straw just like you would treat compost - let it sit out and age for awhile before spreading.
Dale is the best part of your videos - although the content is also good! j/k
Are you not concerned about Grazon being in the straw ??
I’ve used straw mulch in all of my containers this season. In about half of those, huge clumps of grass is growing. When I emptied the pots to recycle it into my compost, I observed the root system of those grasses. They were taking over the pots with long, thick, and numerous roots.
My solution is cover cropping and termination to grow your own mulch. Peas/legumes are the preference. Don’t let them flower. Cut them down in warmer climates or let frigid winter conditions due it for you.
I’m handicapped and have an electric scooter, I just got baby chicks so I use a large Christmas tree bag in my mini van to haul bales of hay. Their nice the feed store puts them in the bag for me and since they hold a large artificial Christmas tree, you can zip it completely open to place the bale on then zip it up, it has heavy duty straps for carrying.A strap on each end for pulling as I drive my scooter around back, plus their waterproof even though I put it in a lg tube with wheels, makes it easier to roll in and out of my pen. No mess in van or smell of hay. Also can haul bags of feed. I also carry an extra bag in the van. Got them after Christmas from Amazon they were 2 to a package.
Straw is the stalk after the grain (seed head) is harvested so it there are very few seeds. Hay is made up of whole plants & if not harvested before seeds develop, can contain many seeds.
Precisely. Straw is a byproduct of the wheat harvest, so in theory, the seeds should be mostly removed. Allowing the straw bales to sit out in the weather for 3-6 months to begin decay can also be beneficial. That's what I sort of did by using them to insulate my bananas for 5 months prior to use. The result: ZERO weeds.
If done lightly for seedlings to pop but still need shaded soils and wind protection straw will send up tons of volunteers. Key is so what wheat is great grass with loads of benefits. Green fert or actually harvesting. The wheat. Bud I plan on doing a heavy layer to stop all unwanted growth after seedling develop
Also did not let sit like in bananas trees so that also helped imo
Pine needles are bailed here like square bails of hay and sold at hardware and gardening stores. Long needle pine is used and farmed just for this. We use cardboard covered with pine needles and that lasts one year to be composted the next year. They do not make the soil more acidic. The yellow long needle pine tree so common in Georgia has a new use! We have raked up some from the yard and put them around blue berries, figs, tomatoes, egg plants, peppers, any single stem plant. We do water more so the water gets past the mulch to the soil and soaks down to the roots. Once watered then, this works best for us so far.
I've used straw in my raised beds since day 1. It's really good. I rarely water and hardly ever see a weed. If one does pop up, it pulls out, root and all, really easily.
Slimy, wet, decaying wheat straw, or any kind of straw, can become a super magnet for SLUGS. I tried growing potatoes in hay, and slugs ate them all up.
Yeah, i bought wheat straw for rabbit bedding, and use it all the time for plant beds. Never had an issue with weed seeds.
You may get a couple seedlings here and there, but they pull easily. We had a warm December, so I did have a few sprouts. Just run your hand through the mulch layer for 3 seconds and they all come out.
Hay is better for rabbits.
I have what’s called a grab and go bag of straw I got for my chickens and mulched my fall veg garden. I didn’t realize it was full of wheat seeds till it seeded like crazy. I’m curious to see what happens in the spring. I’ve been picking the grass for the chickens in the mean time. Otherwise I love it. It seems to allow great cover that has air in it, it’s so light with lots of life going on on top of the soil.
Throw your straw in with your chickens as they will clean all of the seed out for you. After a couple of weeks it is manured and ready to put on your garden.
My advantage and success is probably because the straw sits in those banana cages for 4 months and decomposes, getting blasted by rain, sun and freezing temps, before spreading. By the time I spread the straw in March or April, any leftover seed is long rotted. It is probably good practice to buy your straw bales and let them sit out in the elements for a few months to begin breaking down and ensure not just the seed is destroyed, but any trace herbicide has gone inert.
The chickens will love to eat the seed. Some who keep chickens grow some wheat so they always have it available for them.
I have grown tomatoes in strawbales for 3 years. I started because I was renting, but it has always works. And in then I would mow it in the spring. I noticed that the best soil was under the bales and rotated. Now I use the bales for insulation in winter and mulch in summer = great combo.
That sounds like a good plan. If you let a straw bale sit in a position for a couple months and then pick it up, you'll find a ton of bugs underneath, especially in the winter. They're keeping warm, and slowly chomping away, decomposing the bale and improving the soil underneath. They're really great!
You get right to the point and that’s what your views want 👍
Thank you! I try to edit myself.
Neighbors like "This guys bananas!" Lol, love it!
I bought straw for my garden and was somewhat pleased with it.But it did not fair well in my strawberries and I have been inundated with weeds. It was great in my garlic bed I planted last fall. I’m not entirely convinced yet. But do think it is one of the better mulches.
I feel the best ways to mulch is using bark/wood chips in the fall and straw in the spring
I went today to purchase this Harwood Bark... I guess they don't have it anymore, so I purchased the DECO BARL MEDIUM NUGGETS, they look all natural, no paint or anything. I hope I did a good purchase.
Living in Australia, we have the opportunity to use sugarcane mulch.
This tends not to harbour seeds.
And the problem I have found with woodchip mulch, which I love for flower beds, is that it can encourage white ants, which are quite prevalent in certain areas.
But sugarcane mulch is excellent for all veggie beds.
Use good quality straw, it has fewer weedy seeds. If you use the cheap stuff, it's often full of weeds. Learned that from experience. Also, try using lucern-hay - it has more nutrients.
The problem is cost. Bale's of straw are $5-6 from a farm supply store, but those small bags of EZ Straw are $15. You'd go broke if you had more than a couple beds. Straw itself is fairly low in weeds since the grain portion has already been harvested, but a smart way to do this is to buy your straw 3-6 months ahead of time, stack your bales in the yard, and let the sun and rain hit them for months. That will begin the decomposition process and destroy seed. Then, spread the "old straw" around your plants later.
Agree In all areas! Have found the same to be true, although I did get one batch of wheat straw that had some trace herbicides and my plants showed the signs, but, my soil biological was so good, they grew out of it pretty quickly. One note though regarding mulching your veg garden with the straw. It WILL DEFINITELY draw in the snails more. (At least in my area, anyway) Zone 8B, But I just know in advance and set out my baby food jars with cheap beer and they die happy! 🤔😄
Regarding the herbicide, it is probably good practice to buy the straw bales and let them sit for a few months before use. Letting them rot some will ensure the seed is dead and any trace herbicide is destroyed. I, thankfully, haven't had issues with snails (yet), but iron phosphate is quite effective and cheap.
@@TheMillennialGardener thank you for that. I have huge piles of sprayed horse hay that is used for running horses so it is really sprayed. It has been sitting for three years and has started to decompose. Do you think that would be safe for my garden?
@@patticriss2238 sprayed with what? If herbicides nope no way
Mulch helps keep the roots cooler too. Best root temp in mid 60F
What about the Grazon herbicide on straw? Is that a possible problem?
Pine straws pretty good and available for our area and you don't have to worry about seeds and grazon
I've used pine straw in the past. My main issue with pine straw is I'm not a huge fan of the look, and it constantly blows away. It is good stuff, though, in terms of function. If I had a truck, I'd probably go get myself a few trash bags full. I have been collecting the falling needless my rear property and spreading where I can. I've gotten myself about 20 free gallons so far and I've been dumping them under my citrus trees.
I heard to put the straw in a trench 10 inches under down and cover it back up plant over it keeps soil moist under
I now have 23 small truckloads of hardwood and pine mixed chips in my backyard delivered over the summer months. But, like you, I've heard the same issues with wheat straw so I opted for the chips. 🙄 Oh well looks like the chips will have to fill the bill for a while.
If I could get that for free, I would take every pile. Unfortunately, when you have to pay for it, you have to choose. I was always afraid of straw, but now that I’ve seen it in action, I’m in love. If you’re scared, let the bales sit out in the rain all winter to rot, then use it. That should kill the seeds. Maybe that’s why I’m so lucky?
@@TheMillennialGardener Well it is "free". But after you tip the (? tree trimmers) hauling crew a 10 here and a 20 there it does add up. And good luck with even getting them started - It took me 5 or 6 years since they brought it last time. You have to run down the foreman of the crew wherever they are working and request it - and even a 20 spot there might pay off ... well it's a game with them to see who has the best "incentive" for them. 😉
@@gitatit4046 I've been offering $80 on Chipdrop for over 2 years, as well as called some local companies. I've yet to be successful 😥 Location has a lot to do with it. I think I'm too far out of the city and too far out of the way, and they really don't like going to subdivisions. For 10-20 yards of wood chips, I'd gladly offer $100! Mulch is $40 a yard. A 10-yard delivery is easily over $400. Even $100 would be a steal.
@@TheMillennialGardener That's right. I don't mind the tipping since I know I'm getting a bargain in the end. BUT the hassle and frustration of trying to get it delivered is a different matter. I guess we do what we gotta do in the long run. I wish you luck on your end.
@@TheMillennialGardener - I had the terrible experience with straw bale bought in Home Depot: it was all full of seeds. I almost killed my strawberries with germinated weeds... With EZ-Straw my experience is strictly positive. No seeds in it.
I'm using free truck deliveries of wood chips as well. And free horse manure from the nearby stable. Horse manure could be dangerous, though, if they used hay with herbicides...
My experience with wheat straw was a nightmare, it filled my bed with endless sprouts from the seeds in the straw, then also you don't know what herbicides they used on it in the field. Not for me. I love your garden and banana trees. Thank you for sharing.
Are you sure you used straw and not hay? Straw is a byproduct, and it usually contains few seeds. You can easily prevent this, though, by buying your wheat straw 2 months before you use it. Buy your bales, stack them and let them sit in the sun and rain. That will destroy the seed, and it will degrade and wash off any residual pesticide that may have once be sprayed.
Nice. Good to know. Mulch is where i lack in knowledge.
As far as seeing grass sprouting in the straw, its mostly just whatever grain the straw came from. It pulls easy and I just lay it back down as green manure..
Yep, that's true. For me, I never had to pull a single blade. I had zero germination. That being said, one of the biggest sources of "weeds" in my garden are volunteer tomato and pepper plants! It can get pretty annoying come July 😂
Have u tried Manny cucumbers? Here in Texas, they have been a game changer for me especially for making pickles.
Thanks for all the great information.
You're welcome!
I found a good and relatively cheap straw in local Ace Hardware store. It's called EZ-straw. I used it to mulch tomatoes.
They sell that at Tractor Supply, but it's $16 a bag. It's a beautiful product, but it's the same size as the hardwood mulch bags at Lowe's for $3. If you have small beds, I'm sure it works well, but I'd go broke buying as much as I need. Unless you have a much cheaper source. A bale of straw is $5 and will have 4 times the coverage. The bales of straw will not be as nice, but you can always let the straw sit outside and rot for a few months if you want to make sure the seeds have decayed.
@@TheMillennialGardener - yes, it makes sense.
I agree that mulch is the most important component on the soil. It protects the soil, keeps it moist, suppress weeds, it makes compost in between layer of the soil and mulch, saves time and effort in watering, composting, overthinking, its simply dumping all rotting materials on top.
I don't think my straw is wheat straw and this year a bale is $15! But I've been using straw and wow when it finally breaks down in a mix of soil it's like the black gold people talk about.
So practical. Good job👍👍Thanks for sharing. 👍👍👍Stay connected🔔🔔👍🤝😍😍😍
Glad it was helpful! Thank you for watching!
Tractor Supply sells a bail with 5 different hay. Alfalfa barley and I forget but it's killer bedcover
It has not only micro and macro beneficials but its all soaked with Mollasis.
Wheat is also considered an Allelopathic plant, meaning that that the plant releases natural plant suppressant compounds that prevent other plant seeds from germinating near them; hence such plants as sunflowers and walnut trees that have these same effects on competing plants that try to grow near them.
After time the wheat straw looses these weed suppressant properties as it decomposes over time. I find wheat straw a very good mulch!
Wheat straw literally grew wheat all through my beds. It was a pain in the butt to pull out, and when I did, all of my compost came out with it. It made a huge mess that made us almost give up. I would never use wheat straw again in my zone 8a bed. It was full of wheat seeds, and they germinated like crazy as soon as it was exposed to rain and sunlight.
This
If you add lots of water to the straw bale and leave it for a year, most of the grain will germinate, the next year it will make a mulch with less wheat growing
Wheat straw is going into our vegetable garden tomorrow.
Because of a lack of other biomass, I started using larger grass stalks and other stalks, bigger materials, and I'm impressed though it doesn't look that great.
Many people including myself use straw, it's an old old gardening technique thru the ages. Nowadays it's tough to find organic straw but it's worth it, otherwise you can ruin your garden with herbicides used on the grains (they even spray wheat to force it to ripen prior to harvest). Yes there's seeds in the straw (not as bad as hay) however they easily come out, much easier than weeds in bare soil! and you just lay them on top of the straw where they shrivel up and add a bit of nitrogen.
You said theres only ONE drawback but I read so much about mulches in the past week and the reason I'm afraid to use organic mulch is b/c it holds moisture which is great for everything you mentioned, except b/c of that wonderful moisture, underneath it is a great place for insects and since that's a food source for rodents ( mice & rats ) it attracts them .. Also its a cool moist place underneath the mulch for the mice to make they're nests for the hundreds of babies they will be giving birth to all summer .. Since I'm so terrified of attracting these types of rodends, I'm too worried now to you use it .. I did though give your vid a 👍 as I did enjoy it and can see you on w what you're doing in the garden .. Looking forward to watching more and if you read this comment and you know about keeping insects such as termites and rodents such as mice/rats away, please make a video on that .. Rats were never a problem here in Ontario Canada but they sure are now. 😟
Natural predators? Aka, farm cats maybe?
Hi. I love your videos. How about Cypress Blend Mulch. Can you do a video on this one?
I been using pine needles to cover my plants 🪴 no problem free for the taking and it works good for putting around my blueberry bush. Keeping my plants cool is top priority here in hot Florida. 🔥