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wondering about mulch

chile_freak

chile_freak

I have an interesting question about mulch i supose. DO any of you know, whether crape myrtle wood work as a mulch?
You see we have a whole row of the very large pink tree type of crape myrtles, and this year i had them pruned way down so as to provide more light for the backyard gardens, we chipped all the big branches and now have a huge pile of mulch sized crape myrtle chips, the wood is extremely hard, so I thought maybe it would work, and would slowly decompose like other hard woods, however it occured to me that maybe the is some sort of acidity issue or something, as I have not heard of crape myrtle mulch before. Anyone who has any ideas? I am considering experimenting on one of my sweet pepper plants, not to risk any of my babies;)
 
I would be worrried about releasing too much nitrogen into the soil. Curious too see what others say. My buddy who works at a nursury says mulch is just a place for bugs to hide. So I stay away from any mulch for my peppers. Went with black plastic for my inground plants and it is working great. But it hasn't hit 100 degress yet!
 
If you are considering using any mulch in your garden as a soil amendment, it has to be added months prior to you actually planting in the garden. Orgasms in the ground use nitrogen to break down and decompose the wood. This depletes the soil of nitrogen until the organisms are finished decomposing the wood. Then the nitrogen is released back into the soil for use by your plants.
 
3/5 I wasn't thinking so much as a soil amendment, more as a moisture retainer, weed preventer,e.t.c. mostly I have read that it is great for tomatoes, but I also considered the in ground chile plants as well just contemplating as I said I have this huge pile of wood chips, i will probably justs slowly process them through the compost pile, but It occured to me that if hardwood mulch might be advantageous, might crape myrtle work as well?
 
:rofl: Love your mother....Wait, that was kind of creepy...

3/5King and Jamie raise some really good points about mulch.

Yes, Jamie, I do get some fire ants in my garden, but they're not hard to get rid of...The benefits far outweigh the inconvenience of applying ant killer to the rows..

And you are right, 3/5King, new hardwood chips in the garden use up a whole lot of nitrogen during the decay process. When I first began using hardwood mulch I had some very tough lessons around nitrogen tie-up: My plants first stopped growing, then grew withered and yellow, and before I figured out what the heck was going on, several of them actually died. I learned that to keep the plants healthy I had to add way more fertilizer than I would have with regular soil. Osmocote 14-14-14 (time release), applied in the soil as I was planting, along with regular applications of Liquid MG did the trick. Again, a bit of a pain and more expensive, but judge for yourself from this 2011 photo of some old geezer and some of my Cajamarca plants whether there is an advantage to using hardwood mulch straight out of the bag:

Congo%26Mulch.jpg


Here's some more info on rebuilding depleted soil with chipped hardwood. Highly recommended reading to anyone who grows food:

http://dl.dropbox.co..._2007_11_27.pdf

http://dl.dropbox.co... Paper 2001.pdf
 
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