My Backyard: Mulching the Garden & the Moon Calendar

Over this past week unfortunately I have not been able to get out and do some gardening due to being bedridden with a debilitating flu virus. However my husband, when he has been able to, has been making good use of the longer daylight hours to do some garden maintenance.


It has been great to know that garden beds that were choking with weeds brought on by the winter weather have steadily been delivered some loving care.


With choking weeds removed, what plants were intentionally planted out previously, can now have a better chance themselves of accessing the warm Spring sunlight.

Some time ago we purchased an Electric Mulcher and during this past week it has been made good use of in the garden also.

Mulching is an effective means to deal to the resulting piles of those unwanted weeds, with their tangle of leaves and lengthy stalks.

All the various weeds, clippings, small branches that had been piling up over the past little while, were put through the Electric Mulcher and then applied back into the garden.


Mulching the garden is a very healthy thing to do. Having soaked the garden bed a bit with water via the garden hose, the fresh mulch could then be added.

Sometimes added some Blood & Bone into the mix is beneficial also, depending on your Mulch Mix and the particular garden bed's needs.

Mulching we have found actually helps curb weed growth in any given garden bed. Mulching helps to regulate soil temperature and moisture levels also.


We were keen to get on and begin mulching now, in preparation for summer, as last summer we lost numerous crops in the garden due to a local drought.

Losing crops in your family garden due to drought conditions, was and is very dis-heartening.

It can indeed be a costly outcome for your annual household budget.

To not have the anticipated produce stored away in the freezer, preserving cupboard or pantry later in the year, can be a budget challenging outcome.


Rather than have ample home-grown produce stored away as hoped for, we had very little due to the drought experienced last summer.

It was a hard lesson, however a good lesson in hindsight. It is one we have learnt from and it was an experience that we are now trying to pro-actively avoid having happen again.


To deal with any potential drought you need to prepare well ahead of time.

Hence the decision of making a somewhat pricey purchase for our household of an Electric Garden Mulcher a few months ago.

Other women may experience an excited thrill over a high end brand of shoes or a handbag finally being able to be purchased. I however, got a thrill out of being able to buy a Garden Mulcher.

Being able to walk into a major local home and garden retail store, with enough monies finally in the bank account, to look at purchasing a rather substantial Electric Garden Mulcher was great.

Our Garden Mulcher was a much hoped for dream-come-true purchase for our household. It is a gleaming substantial, fairly heavy duty metal wonder of a machine, that we are delighted to now own.

We are truly hoping that the investment made in owning our own Electric Garden Mulcher, will pay itself off in the form of a better harvests this year and beyond.


As time and energy allows, more and more garden beds in and around the family garden will be given a mulch covering over the next little while.

This will occur before the scolding heat of summer that seems to typically occur in our particular region sets in.

Mulching the garden, plus planning and preparing ahead to carry out other getting-through-another-potential-summer-drought precautions, will hopefully help our household to address any potential water restrictions that are applied, across the board, in our local community.

Mulching is certainly one of several very practical and earth friendly steps, that can help those of us trying to live off our own little piece of earth achieve that very goal.

However big or small your garden may be, mulching is very much a soil/earth friendly, crop friendly pro-active garden activity to do.


In amongst the activity of mulching, from Saturday 12th October through to  Wednesday 16th October, according to the Moon Calendar it will also be a good time to sow and plant out all above-ground producing crops.


From Wednesday 16th October to Thursday 17th October is a good time to feed plants with liquid fertilizer. Some of the Fish and Comfrey Fertilisers I have had percolating away, will now be able to be watered down and applied to the garden.

From Thursday 17th October right through until Monday 21st October it will be once again a good block of time to cultivate the soil: continuing along on with the recent focus we have of adding compost, weeding, preparing beds and mulching.

October is a lovely Spring month. Full of that unsettled mixture of weather that is typical of this time of year, yet a month still full of signs of growth and development being revealed in and around the family garden. Fantastic.



No comments:

Post a Comment