Forum home› Fruit & veg
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Mulching with compost

tuffnelljohntuffnelljohn Posts: 284
in Fruit & veg
Hi all,
Ive been reading up about no-dig gardening. It all makes sense. However, I keep reading about mulching with compost (I have lots of well rotted horse manure) to retain moisture and suppress weeds. Silly question, but wont the weeds just grow in the compost mulch?
Thanks

Posts

  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    if the compost is well made, seeds will have rotted in there. You'll still get wind blown seed germinating, hand weed and keep mulching with more layers as time goes on.

    Devon.
  • Blue OnionBlue Onion Posts: 2,995
    And and because you are adding layers of mulch each season, spring, summer, fall, winter, repeat.. any seeds that do get blown in are buried soon enough.  Loose mulch is very easy to hand pull weeds from, as well.  
    In theory, at least.  I tried it for several years.  Worked really great the first two.. but then the bindweed and quackgrass/couch grass spread through the beds.  Mulching makes the pulling easier.. but I could never generate enough compost to mulch as often as recommended/necessary.  So for the past two years I've had to dig the beds over hunting for roots.  Heck of a lot of work.. but has drastically reduced my issue with those two particular weeds for the entire growing season.  
    Short answer is that the method works great for most weeds.  Mine didn't come from the compost, but rather the lawn that surrounds my beds.  In future gardeners, I plan to surround my beds with bark chips or such, away from my weedy lawns.  
    Utah, USA.
Sign In or Register to comment.