WOO-HOO! MY FRIENDS AT WHDD in Sharon, Connecticut, aka Robin Hood Radio, just called to say our A Way to Garden podcasts are not just on iTunes but also on an RSS feed. Easy, peasy, to tune in to. Thank you, my “slightly off” radio partners (no offense intended; it says so in their logo, above), for making it easier for A Way to Garden readers to become listeners, too. This week’s topic: mulch. (You know me, I’m a little obsessed on the subject.) Listen in, at your convenience.
THE LECTURE that he’s been giving for a number of years is not-so-subtly called “Kill Your Lawn.” Ecological horticulturist Dan Jaffe Wilder knows that starting over and creating an entire native habitat instead of a lawn isn’t for everyone. But Dan just wants to grab our attention and get us to start to make some changes at least in the way we care for the turfgrass we do want in our landscapes. And maybe give up a little square footage of it to some other kind of more diverse planting, too, like the wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana, inset). Alternative, more eco-focused styles of lawn care, along with some lawn alternatives is what he and I talked about on the podcast. Dan is Director of Applied Ecology at Norcross Wildlife Foundation in Wales, Massachusetts, and its 8,000-acre sanctuary. He’s also co-author with Mark Richardson of the book “Native Plants for New England Gardens.”
(Stream it below, read the illustrated transcript or subscribe free.)
Will definitely take a listen later today. I love the podcast! It’s particularly nice for downloading on the phone and listening to in the car.
Not sure if you address this in the podcast, but one of my biggest mulch peeves is when you people pile on about 6 inches of heavy bark mulch on beds in March. Up here in zone 5A, the plants haven’t even started waking up then, much less is the soil warm enough to think about mulching. I almost expect that behavior from McDonald’s, where I saw them mulching the third week in March (when it was still snowing on occasion), but I now see that the garden outside the local Visitor’s Center, which is maintained by a local gardening group, has been mulched as well.
That will make it sooooo easy to always catch your podcast. Yea. I’ll get signed up.
I wish your friends at WHDD’s website would mention the topic of each broadcast, instead of just titling them by their dates. I didn’t see a “contact us” on the page, so I’m passing this on to you!
I wanted to download these from iTunes, but I search for “A Way to Garden”, “Margaret Roach”, and “Gardening”, and didn’t turn up these podcasts. Any ideas on how I may find them on iTunes?
Margaret,
I tried to sign up for your podcast through itunes but couldn’t find it anywhere.
????
Just thought I’d let you know.
Thanks GonSS and ShySusan…it does appear to be broken at the moment. I have just emailed the station to alert them. Ah, technology! What I had done a couple of days ago was:
go to the link provided above at the end of the post, which is http://podcasts.am1020whdd.com/~am1020wh/shows/category.php?id=119
click on RSS button above the list of shows
select iTunes as provider in little dropdown menu up top of that next page (the RSS page)
and so on.
Can’t make it work this morning. See if you can.
Will get more details…and again, thanks.
Hi Marion, do you experience any negative effects to the soil by invasive work species that love mulch, too? In several places where I’ve mulched, and sometimes where the plant makes a thick cover, the soil is so disturbed and thick with work casings, things just don’t seem right. They strip and loosen the soil so much that it doesn’t even feel or act like soil any longer. Cornell Plantations has had real problems with Amynthas sp., and have been forced to take many inches of topsoil out & replacing it around fragile collections. I wrote to the garden professors about this and was instructed to embrace my worms, so I don’t think they’ve experienced this yet. They ain’t your innocent night crawlers! Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be a lot out there in the blog world about it, and I’m still at a loss since I don’t want to encourage further destruction to soil integrity but also would really like to enjoy the benefits of mulching! Thanks ~Lynn
@Lynn: No issues here from too much mulch or too many worms, no. I keep the mulch to under 2 inches, and use a material that is relatively fine-textured, composted for some time before use it as mulch, and slowly breaks down into the soil as I explain on this mulch FAQ page. You might want to contact the Cornell grad student mentioned in this research project (bottom one on the page) to see if there is any information on the worm species you are concerned about. Other than that, I don’t see much in the way of references on the subject to share.