Overheard a guy at the hardware store say 'cedar mulch is for show, not for soil' and now I'm rethinking my whole garden plan

I was picking up a bag of lime last Saturday and this older fella was talking to the cashier about how he stopped using colored mulch years ago. Said it just sits on top and does nothing for the ground underneath. I've been dumping bags of that red dyed stuff on my flower beds for 3 seasons now. My soil is still like clay. I never once thought about what the mulch was actually doing besides looking nice. Has anyone else just kinda assumed mulch was helping and then found out it wasn't?

3 comments

3 Comments

jennifer96515d ago

Got a buddy who spent two whole summers dumping cedar mulch on his veggie patch because he thought it would "feed the soil." Only realized his mistake when he dug down to plant tomatoes and found bone dry wood chips sitting on top of rock hard dirt. His carrots came out all twisted and tiny, couldn't even get a radish to grow past marble size. He finally asked his neighbor who actually knows plants and got told cedar repels water and takes forever to break down. Now he's out there every spring mixing in actual compost and manure, calls his old mulch phase his "decorative dirt era.

drew69016d ago

cedar mulch is for show, not for soil" lol that's basically my entire approach to gardening summed up. I've been out here thinking my beds were getting premium dirt treatment but really I just bought expensive ground pillows for my plants to sit on. My soil is straight up concrete with a fancy red hat on it. Guess I should have been paying attention to what was happening underneath instead of just admiring how the dye matched my shutters.

davis.noah16d ago

Wait have you tried just mixing some compost in with the mulch? That's what fixed my concrete dirt, I just layered it under the cedar and let it break down over a season. Cedar's fine for the top but you gotta put the good stuff underneath where the roots actually are.