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The Risk Of Getting Toxic Mulch – And The Way To Avoid The Pitfalls
Mulching, these days, has become popular, due to the benefits it brings to the plants and soil in your garden beds. In certain regions of the country it comes with a caution, though. That’s due to the main ingredient of a widely used type of mulch in these parts being a shredded sawmill waste product, hardwood bark. The sawmills had difficulties disposing of the waste bark which resulted from the practice of denuding the logs before sawing them.
Using the bark to make mulch was a handy solution for the lumber yards, but it’s not perfect. The lumber mills pile the bark up high to save space, and with little demand for the mulch in winter the piles get really high. The danger for your garden arises from the mulch being compacted too tightly by the front end loaders having to drive up onto the heaps. The debarked mulch needs time to decompose, and it also needs oxygen and air flow in the pile. The temperature of the decomposing bark, when it’s so compacted that airflow is restricted, can get very high, and there’s even the danger that it could catch alight.
Because the resulting gas can’t be released through airflow, the mulch can actually be contaminated and become toxic. Aside from the offensive smell when you dig into it, there’s also a threat to your plants when spreading it around. The pent-up gas in the mulch is released, which can burn your plants. Spreading this stuff around your plants could cause them to go brown in as little as few minutes. Your once verdant lawn could go an ugly brown if you dump mulch like this on it. The hard part, you may not be able to tell good mulch from bad until the damage has already been done.
The bad mulch has a strong odor once you get down to it in the pile, but so does the good mulch, and the smell is different, but you may not be able to tell the difference. A darker color could also point to the mulch being bad, and if you want to be safe then you could check it by surrounding a sacrificial plant with some of the mulch. Make sure that you take mulch from inside the pile, and not on the edges. Inspect the plant after at least 24 hours; if no damage has taken place the mulch can be used with confidence.
This probably isn’t that big of a problem, but when it happens to you, you probably would have liked to know about it. It might not make you too happy to put something on your plants, and later find out they were burned. Mulching is good for your garden and your plants, but it is good to know that there is bad mulch, so buy your mulch from a reputable place that stands behind their product.
Louis V. Greene writes about mulching of plants along with Ottoman Coffee Table.To know more about Lift Top Coffee Table click here.
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