I would like to put something down in the vegetable garden that would act as a mulch to help keep in the moisture, keep weeds down, and we can walk on to keep mud off the shoes. I want to be able to plow it in to help aerate the soil at the end of garden season and hope to have it help with adding nitrogen to the soil as well. What would you recommend that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg? The garden is about 20 ft by 50 ft.
What's the best cover for garden paths?
Sometimes I sieve my compost - the course or not-quite-finished stuff I use on top as a mulch. You can use stuff that hasn't been composted yet, but you might need a little extra nitrogen on the surface of the soil under the mulch.
What compost able material do you have ? Pine needles? Grass clippings?
You can plant a "green manure" like clover, peas, or buckwheat.
This message was edited May 28, 2015 4:12 PM
Have a lead on some rotted hay to be picked up tomorrow. Our compost pile is really small at the moment. We have clay soil so I want something that can be tilled in at the end of garden season or left and top dressed with with the neighbors leaves in the fall and then plowed under next Spring. We don't have trees on the property so we go begging for leaves in the Fall. The neighbors think we're nuts.
If you use hay, its unlikely you'll have anything left to till in fall. That's not a bad thing; it will rot into the soil in its own.
However, a lot of hay is now sprayed with persistent herbicides now that don't break down for years, even in a full hot compost pile. It, and manure from animals that have been fed hay, have become a dicey proposition for gardening.
http://content.ces.ncsu.edu/herbicide-carryover.pdf
Leaves or pine needles might work, too.
I'd be really reluctant to put down hay/straw. I have livestock and I no longer use their manure or or hay in my garden, it's just not worth the risk.
Pine needles are a great idea but they can make the soil acidic,which I would love.
RE: rotted hay
The risk with persistent herbicides is with grass hay, not alfalfa. Alfalfa hay is probably okay herbicide-wise. But either way, try to track your hay back to the grower and ask what they have used on the field in the last 5 years.
Organic or not, you are likely to get seeds in your hay, so you may to do some weed management down the road. Probably an improvement over heavy clay though.
Alfalfa is also treated from what I've heard. It's the only way to keep it clean of weeds which is very important to most horse owners, of which I am one. But we don't feed alfalfa here. Just read on another thread how Tractor Supply was selling GMO alfalfa pellets as an organic garden nutrient....
I'd be especially careful with the Round up ready alfalfa. IMHO hay is just too risky.
It's pretty safe to assume Round Up Ready crops have been heavily sprayed with Round Up, but Round Up breaks down really fast -- in weeks -- so it's not going to harm your plants like Round Up would if you use it in your compost, and certainly none left in manure.
The persistent herbicides are engineered to last years so farmers spray their pasture less often. It's kind of a good/bad technology.
Aminopyralid & friends is "safe" to use on alfalfa. Any kind of fodder grass is potentially contaminated. One way to tell if hay *hasn't* been sprayed is if there are broadleaf plants mixed into the hay, like clover. The clover would die if they were.
The person that gave us the has says that it has not been sprayed. They don't use insecticides or herbicides. It was the grass field around their home and has been sitting in the barn for 3 years.
Sounds perfect
Sounds good. Wear a dust mask while working with it - it will be dusty and possibly moldy. And long sleeves might come in handy, too. But it should be a pretty good mulch for the garden.
Turns out that Roundup doesn't break down as advertised,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/
and has also been labeled recently by the World Health Organization as a probably human carcinogen. The term "probable" is used because although it has been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals, no studies have been done on humans as yet.
If you are in an area where salt hay is available that's a good mulch and would help aerate your soil. I have used wood chips for my paths but got tired of having them spread each year so I went to pavers. But that wouldn't address your issues.
Pine needles are nice to walk on, and I do not believe they increase soil acidity much. And you said you would love it if they did. But the commercial baled pine needles I bought in North Carolina are big and hard, not soft like what I gather from next door. OK if you wear shoes, and leave them in place more than one year before raking them into the beds, I think.
I did have that problem and I did plant in some paths between my beds after trying many different solutions, perennial white and pink clover. It does invade the sides of the growing beds a little bit. Most of the time this is not a problem. I don't let the clover seed, I keep cutting it and I do not use them near beds with root crop like carrots and potatoes.
I do now prefer Lucerne. Does not spread and when established will do an excellent job. I just cut it and toss the stuff on the beds as mulch. But I have kept some path with clover....