Everybody ready for the 40th Annual Mulch Run?!?!? I’m pretty excited. Gonna get my refreshments (fill my water bottle), hop into the Toyota Sienna Racing Van, hook up the trailer, grab a seat, and GO!!!
And I always win.
Aaaahhhh summer time. The garden is exploding, and the weeds are doing really well. Seems like the seeds I actually planted just got going, and all the weeds I didn’t plant (not intentionally anyway) are growing so fast I can barely tell the beets from the purslane. Sure you can eat purslane, and I have. Pretty good in salads and even cooked in Chicken Cockamamie. But it volunteers itself all over the place along with lamb’s quarters and lots of other weedy greens; and if left unchecked the seeds I bought and spent so much time planting will be overrun.
Normal garden process at my house is:
1) Pull up the garden waste from last year in late fall or early spring. OK… usually early spring.
G) Till the garden as soon as the mud from the snow melt is dried a bit.
27) Let the ground dry a bit and also allow weeds to germinate.
*x) Till again, then
4L) Carefully plant the tomato, pepper, eggplant and marigold plants I adopted from the greenhouse; and finally
M#) Make the rows and beds and plant, plant, plant the seeds.
I’ve learned the hard way that if I mulch too soon, the slugs stampede (albeit very slowly) into the garden and chow down at night and hide under the mulch during the day. Not very funny.
So, I wait… then of course the weeds go nuts because hey, I have a life and can’t always get motivated to put my hiney in the garden after a day with friends or family.. That, of course, means I do “catch up” weeding and mulch as I go.
A few years ago, I used hay for mulch. Seemed to work pretty well but it was a bit expensive and I have this silly suspicion that many weed seeds from that year are STILL COMING UP. Straw works but it tends to rob nitrogen from the soil… not a good thing if you’re an old organic hippie like me who refuses to buy chemical fertilizer. Hay actually adds some nitrogen, but again, there’s that weed thing.
So it’s back to basics this year. For 40 years I’ve been gardening here… and have managed to turn sand into pretty nice soil. Primary reason: mulch runs. I had a truck for awhile but switched to a trailer many moons ago and that will probably be what I use until I can’t chew my milkweed anymore.
Or something.
For several years, I’d cruise around the ‘burbs and “steal” their bags of grass clippings and leaves right out from under the suburbanite’s noses. Most are very grateful I’m taking the stuff away from the curb. One year though, I had a strange encounter when I pulled up to a house that seemed to have the mother lode of leaves. A grumpy old man came out to his porch and barked at me,
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!?”
“I’m stealing your leaves,” I replied in an impish tone.
“WHAT’RE YOU GONNA DO WITH THEM??!!??”
“Well I’m gonna use them in my garden, which means I’ll be eating them eventually.”
“OH, alright…” he snorted. He lowered the volume on the last retort as I found my head spinning with ideas on how a person could get into mischief with stolen leaves.
“I’m sorry to alarm you,” I said in a more apologetic tone. “You want me to put them back?”
“No it’s OK,” he said as he went back inside.
Don’t look now, and I must apologize: the 40th Annual Mulch Run has come and gone. Numerous times!! Sorry if you missed it, but there will be plenty more opportunities down the road if you’d care to join me. In other words, I intend to go again because I’m an opportunist. You see, I don’t need to cruise the neighborhoods anymore because lo and behold, the Dalton Township Transfer Station (a.k.a. The Dump) has many tons of leaves and grass clippings for the taking. I bring my recyclables (and occasionally some trash) (because we try to recycle as much as we can so there’s usually not much trash) (oh and the veggie waste goes into the compost pile so…) (so… that’s way too much use of parentheses!!).
One stop shopping!!
Much of what I collect is in the form of oak leaves, often mixed with other clippings. There is a misconception among many that oak leaves are bad for the garden. NOT SO!! Contrary to popular belief, they do not make your garden soil acidic. For one thing, earthworms love them and worm manure is alkaline. The end result is really good soil. And although gathering all this mulch involves a bit of manual labor with a pitchfork, believe it or don’t I actually find that rewarding. I do a fair amount of manual labor in the forms of pitching mulch, digging in the garden, and stacking wood. I tell my friends, “it’s my gym membership”.
I hope I haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings by not inviting you to enjoy a mulch run this year. All is not lost, please feel free to contact me about Wednesdays or Saturdays and we’ll get together for a ride to the dump! I will even provide some PRW (Pillon Road Water) and maybe even some snacks!! Of course, you’re welcome to fill your pockets or other receptacles with just as much mulch as you can gather for your own garden.
In the meantime, please enjoy the outdoors!! But if it’s stormy outside, maybe Grampy can help you have an outing indoors…