Yes early on we really rely on that much! I'm glad you're finding the videos helpful! 🌱🌱🌱

I am working on mulching my entire lawn in the next year as a short term solution before I get the energy to plant the native plants, ground covers, perennials, and vegetables I want. This year the project will be mass planting blue flax and rudbeckia hirta in one area. Baby steps. 😬Am also dealing with creeping bellflower. I...just want to bury it all.

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"Just wait a few weeks..." (?) You almost sold me on leaving this video... Until I glanced down to this previewed comment. Thx Karen! 😊

Great idea, I'll bet they appreciate the leaf mulch! 🌱🌱🌱

You're in the right place!

Exactly! It's great for new gardens. Thanks for watching! 🌱🌱🌱

Mulch, leaf litter, compost are what I use to protect bare ground over winter and spring. It mostly cuts down on commercial fertilizers. I live in zone 9B, semi-tropical.

Love all the native plants!

In 9B deep south even with dense planting I still use mulch (gathered, not purchased) to conserve water and protect soil better in our high heat. It also breaks down nicely and feeds the micorhizae.

​@TexMarque same here. I'm zone 9a. I swear by leafy matter. The absolute best mulch there is. If I don't have enough my second fav is hay. I know, I know people freak out about hay. But if you keep it thick it won't seed. It keeps the soil cool and composts as fast as leaves do.

Thank you so much! It is totally worth it but yes. It takes a while to fill in, I definitely mulch the first and second year, and then I expand the garden and start again😂🌱🌱🌱

Thanks so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Thank you so much, that means a lot! 🌱🌱🌱

Thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Glad to hear it, thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Than you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Glad the video was helpful! Thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Thanks for watching!🌱🌱🌱

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it! 🌱🌱🌱

The hard work will be worth it! Stabilize that hillside! 🌱🌱🌱

did chip drop twice - am in hot central texas and my native (and non-native culinary herbs/medicinal herbs) are just fine without water -- the fig and pomegranate I planted are doing great. Mulch is life (also for termites so good to have a termite service to protect your house!)

I am just done with my first dump of chipdrop. took 4 months to mulch ...

Native grasses will keep erosion down, plant some now for years of enjoyment later!!

Thanks! 😂

Thank you so much! Yes! Let's liberate everyone from the tyranny of ANNUAL mulching 😂🌱🌱🌱

What is a pointed hole?

Thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

So easy! Thanks for watching 🌱🌱🌱

Thank you so much! 🌱🌱🌱

Whoops! That was definitely a late night editing mistake 😂 yes it is woodland phlox. Glad we have someone here that knows so much about woodland plant identification! Thank you! ☺️🌱🌱🌱

Thanks notoots!

So true! Native strawberry is a tough plant!🌱🌱🌱

Awesome! I'll bet they are starting to grow fast right now! 🌱🌱🌱

Thanks so much! I'm glad this some worked out for you!

Oh my god 😂

I call it the "plant museum" look, where you walk a bit to view each plant as you would a sculpture in a museum, haha!

Thanks so much!

That's going to look awesome! 🌱🌱🌱

Thanks for noticing! We really need more examples of how the plants really look in the garden. 🌱🌱🌱

I am going to chop asters very soon and my red bee balm. Aster will get another chop in early July! Will try to mention it in an upcoming video! Thanks! 🌱🌱🌱

It's true, if you are growing things like roses or some annuals for example, they may not like rocks and clay, and it may have to be amended and conditioned for them to thrive to their fullest potential.

😅 🌱🌱🌱

That's great! My beds are older but the edges are all new because i keep bumping them out a little at a time! 😂🌱🌱🌱

@Bea768- I too have increased my use of shrimp compost, spring and fall. This spring my soil is so much healthier with all the worms, etc.. I also noticed huge increase of slugs, earwigs and large black ants when using mulch. I know somewhere that the ecological explanation says that beneficial insects will balance everything out(?) but in the meantime they are destroying my plants. 😢🇨🇦

Relatable 😂🌱🌱🌱

It’s like rearranging the rooms in your house, sometimes you get bored and want a change. Not that *I* have ever done that 😉

Smart thinking. When our plants are small those weeds are way faster! 😂

Deer are tricky, but in general they don't like to eat sedges! It would depend on your location which sedges to choose. And some like sun or shade, or wet conditions so you'll have to look up "native sedges for shade in raleigh NC" For example, depending on your city

That's a great idea

That's fair! 😂🌱🌱🌱

Thanks, just make sure you put down enough mulch to keep the grass and weeds out. Good luck!

I hear you. I'm not convinced that mulch helps with tree weeds? They seem to come right through. I pulled a ton of siberian elm today 😣 You guys have a ton of weed and pest pressure that we do not have in the north.

@@lisalikesplants On the good side, they grow like crazy. In the past two weeks we have alternated rain and 80+ degrees. I plant on the 80 day with fertilizer and the stuff seems to explode. Today I dug up and transplanted almost 50 blanket flowers that had self seeded. Like your channel a lot!

I feel your pain! Grass is constantly trying to get into my native beds. I use a natural edge and it's a constant battle. One thing to check is what kind of grass you have, as bermuda is going to behave differently than fescue. I found out a lot of the grass I had had seeded in and I was able to pull it easily, but it depends on the species, hope this helps! 🌱🌱🌱

Rhizomes will seek the cover of the phlox, which preserves water in the soil. The best thing is to religiously edge the lawn every year with a hand edger to break off the rhizomes and pull them away from the groundcover. It may also require you to dig up the phlox after it is done flowering, clean up all of the grass rhizomes and roots, divide it and replant it for next spring's blossoms.

Most of the beds have leaves and stuff I've chopped from our grasses and stems, but the new bed behind me in the video is just shredded hardwood. I don't like it shredded too finely because it breaks down quick. I just get it delivered locally and my neighbor and I went in on this pile.

@@lisalikesplants , thank you!

Haha yup that's precious soil we need to protect! Thanks for watching! 🌱🌱🌱

This is an ongoing problem for a lot of us. I use a half moon shaped edger and create a natural edge like in the video. The grass tries to grow in during the year but if I trench it really well a couple times a season, that really aggressive grass doesn't creep in. If you have something else like a quackgrass infestation, I've controlled it with diligent pulling. But there are some gardens where I had to start the area over because there was so much quackgrass, there was no way to save it but to herbicide and start the area over. Sadly I have an empty piece of garden where I had sprayed bindweed and it needs to be rebuilt. Sometimes it is necessary. Good luck!

My website has a list of local native plant sources! lisalikesplants dot com. Let me know if it's still working... 😅🌱🌱🌱

No idea 😂

So happy you're starting to garden with natives! It's so rewarding! 🌱🌱🌱

Illinois

Yes I definitely mentioned this is not for the veggie garden

This is such a true statement. Your nana knew what's up! 🌱❤️🌱

I have some shredded hardwood that I'm using in new beds and at the edging and for the path. It looks dark because it's slightly composted, but it's not dyed.

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That's a really good thing to think about! Here in the Midwest we mulch up to the foundation of the home. I assume in a fire risk area rocks would be much safer as a buffer instead of using shredded hardwood at all near the home.

I live in Far Northern Calif fire country. The guidelines for fire hardening homes does not work in totality. Having greenery that keeps the soil from baking and retains moisture is important. Reducing landscape to a barren state to save real estate is too extreme. A lot of buildings burnt down with green trees standing right next to them. Why? The man made materials, windows imploding from the heat and embers wedged into crannies and cracks, smoldering, boom. Keep green.

@@lisalikesplants I don’t know about other parts of the country, but here in California (where most of the houses are wood frame construction) applying wood-based mulch near the house’s foundation is also a really good way to create termite problems. I generally keep all of the areas close to my house mulch free. That being said, in our hot and dry climate, mulch is critical to preserving soil moisture. Weed suppression is just an added bonus.

Excellent resource. But be prepared for a TON. Great to share with neighbors! 🌱🌱🌱

No idea😣

On the contrary, mulching an acre sounds like a lot of work! It really depends on what you have. Many people have large areas where they manage native plant gardens instead of grass. Plants fill in and get big and cover the ground. It sounds hard to spread 15 yards of mulch regularly. If it seems too expensive to have large gardens, seed mixes can be a wonderful alternative. I'll try to show some pictures of larger yards full of plants. ☺️

Thank you for hearing that! I was trying to be diplomatic, but YES 🌱🌱🌱

What if you restore your land to forest and prairie? Nature doesn't need us to build soil, that's for humans, our veggie gardens and agriculture. Native plants don't need mulch, indigenous people did not mulch the forest. They left the leaves and burned the prairie and savannah and the plants thrived.

@@lisalikesplants mulching is just as importantant to grassland ecosystems - the type of mulch should be tuned to the particular biome. A prarie ecosystem should have less tree wood and more ground up stems and leaves. The more you can provide plant material to sacrobes in the soil, the better. Ultimately, if you focus on building your soil at the surface, nature does the rest. Ideally, you want to move away from fertilizer and pesticides altogether, mainly because of downstream effects (people argue about the impact on their plants and of course they are beneficial to "their plants" - its the rivers and oceans that become toxic waste dumps). If you mimic nature in your approach, eventually you won't need any of that stuff and your garden will balance itself out. Our knowledge of soil is very limited - none of our science has looked at what's happening beyond 2 ft down for obvious practical reasons, but most of whats happening with carbon entrainment is happening much deeper and involves more different microbes then there is even time on earth to count. Just like when the gut dr says the high level take away is to feed your gut 30 different plants a week and it optimizes itself, mulch your soil and it optimizes itself.

Indigenous people did mulch actually - they burned the forest every year, which is a form of mulching, just fyi. Nature does mulch. Mulch is broken down wood into small easily decomposed pieces. I think your understanding of mulch has been distorted by people who think it's about moisture control or something like that. If you have a functioning forest or prarie ecosystem, the annual debris accumulation is mulch. Mulching is the foundation of soil health according to every actual published scientific paper on the topic.