One of the first things that you will learn from avid gardeners is that you can mulch garden waste to create rich soil for your garden and this is fine if you understand all of the precautions that come with processing garden waste but for beginners it can be a very bad thing to do.
Garden Mulch normally consists of any type of organic material that comes from your garden and table scraps from your kitchen. The bad thing about that is before this material has been fully processed and sterilized it can spread problems to the rest of your garden.
In much the way that trees that are harvested for firewood must be split in to quarters and rest for about a year before being used because it needs to have a lower moisture content. The mulch that you manufacture needs to be processed correctly.
In addition to being processed correctly before being added back to the garden the mulch that you are processing must be stored at a long distance from your garden because it will attract bugs that want to eat it. Those bugs won’t just stay in the mulch pile they will be attracted to your garden and will cause you problems.
What Should Never Be Processed For Mulch
Every year you hear of recalls on lettuce, spinach, cantaloupe and other because they have E.coli or some other type of contamination. For the average healthy person this can mean a trip to the hospital for others it can be much worse.
If you raise animals you might be considering adding their waste to your mulch. This can be fine for flower beds but the amount of benefit that you will get by processing animal waste for vegetable gardening is outweighed by the problems it can cause. Manure should never be used raw and must be processed at a temperature over 135F for an extended period of many days or weeks to make it safe. This can happen naturally in your mulch pile if you can monitor its temperature and turn the material enough times to process it completely but never use this material the same year it is collected.
Vegetable waste can also be a problem. Tomato plants or the fruit should never be used for mulch if there is any sign of disease. Blight is a very big problem which can spread quickly throughout your garden soil and it would be best to just discard all tomato waste and not use it at all. Any benefit is outweighed by losing a year or a few years of crops while your soil has to rest.
What Should New Gardeners Do With Garden Waste?
Mulching garden waste is not the wrong thing to do but you must approach it with some care. The food that you grow in your garden takes months to grow and making a simple mistake can cost you all that time or even many winter months worth of food.
If you have a USDA Field Office in your area you can contact them and they will be happy to talk with you about how to process materials safely. You can also get additional information from local garden centers, farm supply stores and others only if they have experience in actually growing and they aren’t hired just to manage the store with no actual experience.
If you can’t get information about your situation the best thing to do is keep looking and while you are don’t manufacture your own garden mulch from garden waste, table scraps or animal manure.
Final Note
Although there are many people that think anything organic is safe when it comes to vegetable gardening you need to take additional precautions.
Personally I never use manure whether its local or manufactured in a bag. I don’t use pesticides or herbicides in my garden and when I use them on other parts of my property I make sure they won’t broadcast into the growing area.
Additionally I have got to the point where manufacturing of garden mulch is too much effort for the payback. A general purpose bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer is inexpensive and since it is processed there is no worry about it being safe from disease or other problems.
When I was processing mulch for many years i would build large piles and allow it to sit for many years until it broke down. Once mulch has the consistency of topsoil there is not an issue but it does take 3 to 5 years. Also the mulch I was making was only a side benefit and not a primary need in my garden.