Here at the Big Ferry Road Community Garden we have two different types of plots. Both are the same size and they cost the same amount. One of them is your standard dirt plot, 10 by 12 feet, with soil right on the surface where you can see it, move it, plant in it and pull weeds from it your heart's content. The other plots are a little more interesting. They are also 10 by 12 foot plots, but they have a 4 inch layer of wood chips protecting the surface of the soil. This is our experimental mulch garden or "Back to Eden Garden."
The easiest way to understand a mulch garden is to see it as a protective layer over the surface of your garden. To plant in the mulch you scrape it away so that the seeds or seedlings that you plant are buried in the soil but protected and surrounded by the mulch. The mulch keeps the soil moist around where your seeds or seedlings are planted. It also makes it much harder for weeds to grow up around your young plants. In my opinion the best part of a mulch garden is how it prevents the weeds from growing in your garden. In a regular dirt garden every place where your seeds are not planted weeds are happy to grow. So a huge amount of your work as a gardner becomes removing weeds from your poor unprotected garden. But if you add 4 inches of wood chips to the garden that makes it much harder for those weeds to grow.. and they are also much easier to remove! Last year I used a mulch garden and it was great to spend a few minutes weeding versus hours weeding in my previous dirt gardens. I also enjoyed the fact that though it was a dry summer I really didn't need to water! In my opinion mulch gardens are the way to go!
But there are some challenges that come with mulch gardens. Working in wood chips makes planting a little bit harder in the beginning. You have to perform the extra step of digging through the wood chips before you dig into the soil to plant. Which does take a bit more effort, especially if you are planting your whole garden in one afternoon! There is a little more work at the beginning but a lot less work over the rest of the summer. Another challenge is when you plant. I think you have to plant a little later in the summer than you do in the dirt garden. Based on our experiences from last year. Folks who planted early on in the woodchips didn't see great results. My working theory is that the wood chips keep the soil a little cooler than the dirt plots. So we have to wait longer for the soil under the wood chips warm up to planting temperature. So I guess you can't plant in early June. But I didn't plant till the first week of July and that worked fine!
If you want to know more about logic behind planting in wood chips you can watch this video: This is the original resource for woodchip gardens, or as they call them Back to Eden Gardens. At some point I would love to do a showing of this video at my church, which is next to our garden. But till then I hope this little article has explained why we are trying something new and what we hope to gain with our mulch gardens!
