Last week, we looked at three free garden fertilising tips that won’t cost you a cent (almost). This week, we follow that up with six free mulching ideas that your garden will love. With spring well and truly under way it’s time to enjoy building back your vege garden beds.
If you don’t have a lot of room, repurposing pots, buckets and bins is a great option. You can easily create veggie beds for very little cost, especially if you have a small garden or balcony. If space isn’t an issue, start with one to two beds and expand each year as you grow in confidence.
You can drop me a message on the Dr Compost Facebook page if you’re unsure how to start or need some compost gardening tips.
1. The first free mulch is grass clippings! We’re about to hit lawn-mowing season and a plentiful supply of this green wonder. No longer seen as a painful thing to do, it’s time to see this ever-replenishing supply as a useful resource. In the garden, use it as a mulch around veggies to feed the soil. It has the added bonus of keeping the ‘carrot fly’ away. Keep mulching your carrots with the clippings. In the compost heap, grass clippings are a great nitrogen source. You can quickly fill up a bin alternating layers of grass with a carbon source (wood chips / leaves / straw). Remember to keep all grass clippings away from the base of plants. No touching allowed.
2. Comfrey leaves. Not all gardens are big enough to have a comfrey patch. If you have any fruit trees, you can have comfrey growing underneath them as a living mulch. Cutting the leaves multiple times during the growing season gives you a plentiful supply of mineral rich mulching matter to put around the base of your veggies. Be generous, these leaves break down quickly. Ask a friend to dig up and share some comfrey root with you.
3. OK, these ones are almost free and if you collect the seed will become free! Broad Beans. Broad beans grow fast, produce lots of luscious mulching material, have the added bonus of fixing heaps of nitrogen in the root zone and there’s also a tasty bean! You could grow a dedicated bed a month prior to planting your main crop (now’s a great time). They don’t have to grow to full size. Cut them down when you need the bed. Leave them where you cut them down and plant your seedlings in this great mulch. The other option is to plant the broad beans around your heavy feeders. Cut them in half every time they get a bit unruly or in the way. They will come back a few times with side shoots. Then you can just chop and drop.
4. Free seeds. Almost free. Getting together with some fellow gardeners with your seed packets in hand and swapping seeds.
5. Free seeds number two. The local libraries have free seeds to give away. They are creating seed banks for people to bring surplus saved seed and to give seed to you for free.
6. Free seeds number three. This is the year to save some of your own seeds. Choose one or two vegetables you’d like to save seeds from. Easy ones are Heritage tomatoes, pumpkins and lettuce. With the lettuce, don’t save seed from the one that bolts first. Save the plant that looks great, has no disease and is last to bolt in the heat.
Happy composting and gardening.
Wastebusters delivers the Dr Compost home-composting programme in Queenstown and Wānaka under contract to Queenstown Lakes District Council. Check the Dr Compost Facebook page to see if there are any veggie growing or composting workshops scheduled soon.
Dr Compost can also solve any composting dilemmas for Queenstown Lakes residents, and give you personalised advice to get your composting system humming. Email him your questions to: drcompost@wastebusters.co.nz
