– Mystical Mulch for Urban Gardens

ENVIRONMENT Y ULA A C MA ILIA C CE PHOTOS: Soil is a water tank – mystical mulch for urban gardens Once you get into mulching as a hobby, stepping outdoors can give you the thrill that casino-goers are after: all this great stuff lying around for the taking. This need for surprise, for a boon, it’s in our DNA, so you may as well ﬁnd a harmless way to satisfy it. BY CECILIA MACAULAY the Desert’, renowned Pemaculturist Geoff dressing your garden (or weed-patch) that left: Reclaimed bowstring mulch (Mongolian Horsehair) Lawton employs every bit of low-tech (no is so beautiful and so entertaining that right: (Left pot) Spent leaves of the succulent harvested tech) ingenuity to transform a patch of it catches on with the neighbours, that from my sister’s pot plants, used as mulch on my own. It creates an elegant pot pourri effect. (Right pot) Pea straw ike a spirit gone too long without Dead Sea land into a lush food forest. A you get to know yourself as someone who mulch, cut up small to look less shaggy. love, soil that has been trampled mundane miracle. It was done by digging is part of the solution, a culture-creator. and baked dry will most likely swales, planting nurse trees alongside Don’t expect easy. Easy is boring, don’t repel the life-giving water that fruiting trees, and covering everthing waste your talents on easy. of gum trees, and the pool was swirling comes its way. Off it rolls, down with a protective, nourishing mantle with water-weed, vivid and oxygenating, Lthe drain and out to sea. We don’t see the of otherwise unwanted organic matter, MAKE MULCH-HUNTING FUN a constant supply of nutritious mulch treasures that are too close – most of us mulch. Last year I went mulch-hunting with a waiting to be harvested. miss the fact that the soil is a water tank, Permaculture couple who combine work Swimming had been forbidden, as waiting to be re-charged. Like putting MYSTICAL MULCH and fun. We got equipped with rakes, it would probably be too much joy for money away in investments for a rainy Obviously going to a garden centre and rubbish bins and bathing costumes, modern people to handle. But falling day, now is the perfect time to arrange buying a plastic-wrapped bundle of and went to the ‘secret and forbidden in hadn’t, making it one of life’s more for the water that comes your way to be straw doesn’t turn us on, or more of us place’, nestled in a mountain gorge. 70 blissful experiences of getting wet. The caught and stored in your soil, ready and would have done it by now. Don’t worry, years earlier, local miners had used their next week when I came back with my waiting for all the non-rainy days that mulching is new to many of us, and we spare explosives to turn the stream into mum and nephew, we got bucketloads are certain to come. Like a heart full of all need more encouragement to get it a community swimming pool, which for her ‘stage 4’ water restriction garden. hope, gardens that have been given a happening. So this is my suggestion: nature had now reclaimed. The stream fed Imagine a city where mulch-hunting was Permaculture treatment are ready to catch you forget about ‘should’, and set about into one end, past the crumbling 1930’s one of the things families did for weekend every bit of rain the minute it comes. In discovering your inner mulch artist, your diving blocks, and waterfalled down and entertainment. Turning ‘bleak’ into ‘oasis’ the inspiring You-Tube video ‘Greening inner hunter-gatherer. Discover a way of away. Sunshine filtered through the fringe just a usual weekend pastime. 47023LN96 6 JUNE 2007 livingnow.com.au ENVIRONMENT RICH SOIL, POOR SOIL GET TO KNOW Sawdust: ‘It seemed like a good idea If you measure healthy soil, half its weight at the time’, say friends who have used may be the bodies of soil microbes. Living, YOURSELF AS SOMEONE it, been caught up in it like a perpetual breathing friendly bacteria, miles of fungi WHO IS PART OF THE snowstorm. Being so high in carbon, threads and minibeasts. They aren’t in it takes forever to break down, and the the soil, they are the soil. Without them, SOLUTION, A CULTURE- process can take the nitrogen from the soil is merely dirt, and only the diseased, soil. It can be good for paths, I hear. weedy and tenacious will hang on in CREATOR Dried long grass: Can make lovely there. mulch. So can a boxful of autumn leaves. In healthy, fluffy soil, rain trickles into Stone mulch: Gardeners in desert If the grass has weedy seeds, or the fallen the tiny passageways and airways these countries do this – pile a layer of pale- leaves were diseased, you will be bringing micro-creatures have created, and they coloured stones around their precious trouble into your garden. ‘Use observation’ hang on to every bit of water for dear life. plants. They deflect the suns rays, block is the first rule of Permaculture, and if you They make more offspring to help them evaporation, and release warmth slowly on are blazing any trails, doing any thinking with the task, then release their water and cold desert nights. They don’t rot down for yourself, it will really come in handy. nutrients to plants when things start to and provide nutrients, but well, if rocks Check that any dead leaves did so from old dry. When we protect them with mulch, are all you have…. age, and not some pest or virus. That’s also and feed them with compost or worm Living mulch: Plant other useful plants a reason I take fallen leaves away from my farm castings, we are helping them save so thickly that you cannot see the straw favourite pot plants, and heat treat them in the planet by taking carbon dioxide out of mulch. Or just use sturdy ground cover my compost, rather than just leave them the air, and holding it in their little bodies, plants alone. to be self-mulching. The restrictions of pot in the soil. We are humbly, effectively Mongolian horsehair mulch: (Main plant systems means that they need every sequestering greenhouse gas; we are photo) Not your average mulch, nor useful bit of garden hygiene help I can give them. turning rubbish into life. Desertification for nourishing, as it will take years to Run any new ideas by friends, or better is one of the downward spirals of global break down. But it does its job, stabilising still, people who think differently from warming, and we can see its process at moisture and temperature, and keeps the you. Run them by Google, and listen to work in our own gardens. Soil is cleared, weeds at bay. The soil in this pot plant is experience, not opinion. Trust gardeners, trampled, compacted. Without air pockets mostly rich homemade worm compost not salespeople (or non-gardening activists and nourishment, and the tunnelling anyway – pot plant gardens are small and and columnists) and keep in mind that earthworms, plant-protecting micro- precious enough for such luxury. nobody knows the best way – it is waiting life dies. The soil becomes even more The horsehair was intended for to be discovered…by you. hardened, unable to absorb water, unable bowstrings, from a violin shop I popped to produce life. The poor get poorer. So into while searching for compost heap WE NEED TO ‘MULCH’ OURSELVES AS much cheaper to prevent than to cure. material – I prefer my compost to be WELL enchanting. In the process of asking Taking deep breaths, keeping hydrated and MULCH SMORGASBOARD for waste materials, I made friends with making nourishing meals for ourselves Pea straw from your garden centre is the adorable violin craftsman Brenton. is beneficial. Like what is missing from probably the most practical mulch Deciding to do things you cannot yet mistreated soil, these are the things around. I have found it lets rain in, keeps do by yourself connects you with other we fail to do when under pressure, the evaporation out and weeds down. It people. very actions most likely to turn things breaks down to fertiliser pretty quickly, Pot pourri mulch for pot plants: around – even if a pot plant or a patch of and gets topped up every year. I have used Reclaim spent flower petals and finely- well-tended soil in your life will be your it with a newspaper layer underneath on shaped dried leaves. The plant, the pot reminder of the things needed to keep my mother’s garden in the countryside to and the mulch all contribute to the visual life lively. So have a glass of water, a deep keep down weeds, and every veggie, flower atmosphere you are trying to create, breath, and call up a friend for a mulch- and shrub planted there survives without the very purpose of your garden. For making date. watering. But if its shaggy Old MacDonald big gardens, Jackie French my favourite look doesn’t go with the image that you gardener and writer, recommends running Cecilia works as an eco- and your plants want to create, no wonder over autumn leaves with the lawn mower illustrator, Permaculture teacher you keep on forgetting to mulch. It would to get the breakdown process started, to and Japanese translator. Send be like hessian underwear beneath a slinky stop your mulch flying away from where your own balcony ideas to Cecilia silk gown.

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