Volcano Mulch

Spring is here and with it comes some of our most favorite colors, flowers and habitat. BUT, a more frequent and quite astonishing thing that continues to happen is excess mulch.

Mulch is organic matter that provides a necessary food source for microbes which in turn make nutrients available to the plants.

Sometimes, someone decides to add more mulch, maybe thinking it was more aesthetically pleasing and while some may agree, there’s numerous reasons this is a really bad practice for your trees, shrubs and plants. 

Let’s first talk about mulch quality and various reasons homeowners and property managers include mulch in annual landscape budgets. There are varieties of mulch ingredients, some good and some not so good. There are varieties of colors and textures and due to this variety, there’s specific places for these mulches.

Some basics of mulch, despite its numerous varieties, is it can decrease weed seed germination, increase water retention, decompose and turn into food for microbes and more. Depending on your preferences and goals for your landscape, maybe you’ve been considering red mulch, red tipple stone or river rock. While there is good and bad to every choice in your landscape, it can never hurt to speak with a professional to help you achieve your goals for your property. Today, we’ll discuss the excess mulching practices and the damage to your trees.

Proper mulching techniques require about 2-3” of mulch around the base of your tree. Professional arborists always consider mulch as a cultural control to avoid mechanical damage to your trees. If your tree is placed in the middle of a turf area or a turf area that requires mowing and string trimming, there will always be a good possibility mechanical damage can occur to the trunk of your tree or to some surface roots that have made their way up into the yard. Mechanical damage can be an initial stressor that enable pests and diseases to move in and is caused when the mower deck hits the bark or when your string trimmer gets a wee-bit too close because there’s always one blade of grass that you MUST remove. 

• When mulch is applied deeper than about 3”, and applied above the tree’s root flare, all kinds of problems arise and given no further attention and depending on the tree’s size, you most likely will be left with a large bill to remove the tree OR it may fail causing additional damage to something on your property. It’s like applying loads of Halloween makeup and falling asleep with it on your face. Your skin becomes dehydrated, your pores clogged and if ignored for another day and another day, your skin will begin to have trouble.