I wouldn't count on felted wool allowing water and
air to pass thru to your plants. Remember, the Mongolians used and
still use felted wool to make their yurts, which protect them against the harsh
central Asian winters. Felted wool would probably be better used to cover
garden paths.
Claudia
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 7:01
AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Fwd:
[Spinning] Felting / matting for garden mulch
This came up on the spinning list. I will
send the response that includes a idea for making a felted mulch
matt.
Norma
Hi all,
I have a lot of dirty wool from our latest shearing, and I
would like use it for the garden (we did also keep the nicest parts of the
wool in bags for spinning, but here I'm talking about the dirty stuff that
we skirted off).
We sheared over a month ago, and I immediately
used some of it as mulch -- around the tomatoes and courgettes in
particular. What I'm thinking of doing which would, I think, make it more
practical, is to spread the wool out over a large surface (10m by 1.2m)
and felting it (or matting it or something, I don't know what the exact
technical term is), the idea being to obtain a (relatively) compact mat
that I can then roll up and use several years in a row. Since the mat
would be more compact than the raw wool, it should, I think, be a better
protection against weeds (which is one of my main purposes in using it). I
assume that air and water would still be able to get through (that would
be important though I suppose not absolutely necessary). I've organized my
garden into plots of 10m by 1.2m, so if I make rolls that fit the size of
my plots, I should be able to simply roll them out over empty plots to
avoid weeds growing, and then simply cutting little holes in the spots
where I want to put my plants.
That kind of thing is often done
with a sheet of black plastic, but I don't like that having plastic in the
garden, it's messy-looking, and it always gets torn up over time, and
also, not only is it quite expensive, but it doesn't let the water
through, so it makes puddles whenever it rains... I like the idea of using
wool because not only it doesn't cost me anything, but it looks a lot
nicer, and it does let water through.
Anyway, that's just the context.
My question is, how would you suggest I go about it, and do you think it's
a realistic idea, or is there some reason why it wouldn't
work?
Thanks in advance!
-- Best regards, Jonathan
Neve
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