Need info on Pine Straw Mulch

I've seen bits on information regarding the use of pine straw (dry pine needles) as mulch. I'm reading very encouraging things about it here at DG. My concern is that prior to coming to DG, I was always told that it would make the soil too acid.

Here is my situation. I have very little sun on my property and am surrounded by mature white pines and red pines with a few oak trees thrown in. I've always tried to rake up the needles and dispose of them to save the grass and hosta beds. I primarily have hostas and ferns. From experience I know that the pine needles smother the grass. I would certainly be on easy street with my mulching if I could happily just rake it over to my hosta beds and never have to buy mulch again. Do I need to amend my soil with anything special to balance the pine needles? My soil is quite sandy, but I have mulched with peat and mushroom compost and currently have decompsing hardwood mulch settling in.

Please provide me with whatever collective wisdom is out there regarding using pine straw mulch.

If you mulched with peat, pine straw should not be a problem. If acidic, then a litlle ground limestone is easy to apply.

marie, sure wish I had your pine trees and oaks> I have very alkaline soil and would dearly love to have needles and oak leaves to use to make my compost and to use for mulch. DonnaS

Marie I have mulched with pine straw for many years and never done anything to amend the soil from the acid. Have never lost any plants because of it. I highly recomend it since it's free for you on your property.

Gary

Like you Gary, I have always used Pine straw without problems but this past summer I visited a gardener in Colorado whose soil was truly acidic in areas covered with Lodge Pole Pine needles and cones. Her soil in areas where the Lodge Poles had been removed was testing neutral. I wonder if the difference could be the tree variety or could it be in the amount of rainfall the different areas get. Where I live we easily get 5 times the amount of rain that they get in the Rockies. They of course get snow melt but it is so gradual and we often get gully washers dropping 5" at a time which surely flushes the soil.

Just my curious brain - always wondering why...........

Thank you all for your collective wisdom. I really should do a Ph test on my soil, and then worry about amending if it's a problem. No one around here uses pine straw, and it certainly would be perfect for me. I've got some beds that would already be self-mulched. When the breeze blows it looks like it's snowing pine needles.

Keep the info coming in. Like.....how deep should the pine straw be.

Marie

This thread really makes me think. A lot of people I know have used pine needles for mulch, and I never knew that there could even BE a problem with acidic soil. I'm planning on putting in a tropical garden on the east side of our porch, and using our pine needles (and we have tons of it, hence the name of our subdivision, "Sierra Pines") for mulch. We have sandy soil here, too. Being a newbie gardener, ph is something I haven't even thought about.

I will be moving to my new property up by Gainesville at the end of the month. The front 2 acres is long leaf Pines which I love. I too want to use the pines needles as mulch.

After some discussion with some locals and a couple of our gardening friends here, conditions are perfect for mulching with pine straw. We have a limerock base and sand here, so the combinations of these make it an ideal mulch.

If I happen to run short and need more, there are hundreds of acres of these pines all around. Talk about "dirt cheap" heehee

Molly