Can We Ever Receive Too Much Mulch?

Newly delivered palm tree material

The ever-accumulating main piles

The longer the material stays in a pile, the more it breaks down into rich dark soil

Various plantings recently covered with mulch

Probably not!

Mulch is defined as “material (such as decaying leaves, bark, or compost) spread around or over a plant to enrich or insulate the soil.” Much of our monastery land has a small layer of topsoil and then hard clay underneath, so enriching it is very helpful. Though we have a large property, even if we collected up all the leaves and chewed up all the fallen branches (which would be a huge job), it would barely make a dent in our needs for mulch. As we’ve interacted with tree trimming companies over the years, a great boon came our way, whereby nowadays all the companies who are trimming trees in our general vicinity will deliver the ground-up material to us for free. If they took the material to a county refuse transfer station they would have to pay a fee, so it’s a great deal for them too.

Besides keeping our vegetable garden beds and fruit trees covered which you’ve seen in the past, mulch is used for many plantings on the grounds, basically as much as we have time to transport.