Garden Mulch – Use it to Control Soil Erosion!

When determining which garden mulch or landscape mulch is best suited for your landscaping needs, there are many factors to consider. We can judge distinct types of mulch by studying their reference points from one another.

Before we delve deeper, let's try to answer a basic question a landscaping beginner would raise: How does garden mulch affect soil pH? More specifically, does any garden mulch lower soil pH, as many have long suspected?

The pH composition of your soil has a determining effect on the well-being of your plants. Since garden mulch could influence that composition as it decomposes, it's understandable that people (myself included) have often expressed concern over how garden mulch selection impacts soil pH. Does the use of garden mulch composed of pine needles lead to an acidic soil? How about gardening mulch with leaves from oak trees?

A popular belief of landscape professionals is that garden mulch has insignificant changes in the pH composition of your loam. For example, while oak leaves in your mulch may be acidic when it is fresh, it now turns to become alkaline when it breaks down. Furthermore, based on my reading, it is now generally thought that a garden mulch composed of pine needles lowers soil pH to only a negligible degree, if at all.

With the problem of considerable effects of garden mulch on soil pH on the side, let's look on the other issues in the selection of your garden mulch -- some of which can be assessed, others of which docks to personal landscaping choices. We would have to set things up clearly if only to make a decision, since a garden mulch can do well in one group