permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

My observation with mulch is that it only increases slug trouble in certain 
circumstances (in the Pacific NW, in particular). In rural areas, I saw 
reduced slug populations after mulching because it became great snake and 
predatory beetle habitat (the beetles eat the eggs and young ones), and birds 
would kick apart the mulch to find bugs and slugs. As we've all discussed, in 
the moist spring, raw mulch does encourage earwigs and sowbugs as well as 
slugs if there are no predators. In urban areas, slugs seemed more prevalent 
in fall and spring with mulch, and I suspect it's because there aren't good 
predator pools to draw on (not many snakes in cities). Birds still worked 
over my urban mulch, though. 

It's also important to remember that Steve Solomon, while definitely a sharp 
guy, holds his opinions very strongly, to put it mildly. 

I would recommend continuing to mulch during the winter rains in both city 
and country, though, because soil erosion and leaching is much more severe 
without mulch. So I think pulling off mulch in spring, when it is superb 
herbivore habitat, is a good idea, but I think for the rest of the year its 
benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If we were mimicking nature, mulch would be 
heavier in the fall--during leaf fall--and lighter in the spring, when the 
fall leaves have decomposed. Then we intervene with a moderate depth, 
drought-proofing summer mulch, and then add more in fall, depending on what 
our winter garden plan is.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Sep 18, 2011, at 7:42 PM, Josh Lindsey wrote:

> Bruce - I'm reading "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" by Steve
> Solomon, founder of Territorial Seed Co. He comes to essentially the same
> conclusion you do re. deep mulching in my bioregion:
> 
> *"What happens in our climate is that the mulch provokes a steady and
> unstoppable increase in two kinds of insects --- sow bugs...and
> earwigs...What happens under permanent mulch is that these insects encounter
> an unlimited supply of food and excellent cover to hide in. They also do not
> encounter what limited their population in Connecticut [referring to Ruth
> Stout], which is real winter." *(p.56)
> 
> I personally abandoned the idea after one season...potato bugs and earwigs
> were not yet at plague proportions, but slugs immediately were. Pretty much
> all seedlings were eaten...and a great many further transplants, etc. Not
> worth it. My current thinking is that if I apply mulch at all, it will be
> during our relatively rainless summer and removed for the rest of the year.
> 
> Good luck,
> Josh
> 
> 
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:13:22 -0700 (PDT)
> From: bruc33ef <bruce.feldman@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] mulch and arthropod herbivore habitat
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID:
>       <852f8a3b-518e-433d-8a19-06d459e52b39@u6g2000prc.googlegroups.com>
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> 
> Neil,
> 
>> From my notes on the videos of the PDC given by Mollison and Lawton in
> 2005, non-woody plants require herbaceous mulch.  Possibly, your
> assessment that your woody mulch is locking up the nitrogen is
> correct.  Herbaceous mulch might provide the nitrogen needed to
> distract the pests from your seeds and seedlings.  Lawton goes into a
> long anecdote about how he was using woody mulch on his (non-woody)
> banana plants and ran into all sorts of problems because of this.
> 
> Good luck.
> 
> 
> On Jul 18, 3:56?pm, Neil Bertrando <neilbertra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> HI all,
>> 
>> Have people dealt with the situation where mulching areas in Zone I and II
>> leads to excessive pest problems which eat all seedling starts?
>> 
>> We consistently have this problem here in Reno, NV in the high desert, and
>> have stopped mulching our gardens for the most part for this reason.
>> Sometimes we do light straw mulches, but we are straying away from deep
>> mulch beds and no-till regimes.
>> 
>> Here's my assessment of the problem, and perhaps other people have dealt
>> successfully with this issue.
>> 
>> pest populations increased by deep mulching
>> 
>> ? ?- european earwigs
>> ? ?http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/european_earwig.htm
>> ? ?- sowbugs/rollypolly isopods
>> ? ?http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/O&T/flowers/note11/note11.html
>> 
>> most info I have read does not include these as major crop pests however
>> through direct observation we have seen them here to be the culprits.
>> 
>> they prevent seedling establishment eating them at the cotyledon stage,
> and
>> even eat small trees when planted in an area with dense populations.
>> 
>> Strategies tried:
>> 
>> ? ?- traps:soap and sugar, soy sauce and oil, beer, etc. ?work for
>> ? ?established plants but don't drastically diminish populations and are
> time
>> ? ?consuming
>> ? ?- diatomaceous earth: also works for established plants when applied at
>> ? ?night to feeding insects, time consuming, needs reapplication
> consistently
>> ? ?- chicken food: grazing with chickens in late fall and early spring.
>> ? ? chickens eat them happily and we tried to get them in when small
> veggies
>> ? ?are not growing and at key stages in the insect life cycle to minimize
>> ? ?reproduction. ?still not effective at diminishing populations to a
> level
>> ? ?where we can get seedlings established.
>> ? ?- transplanting in established seedlings: still get heavily eaten
>> ? ?- get plants established before the populations boom as weather warms:
>> ? ?works fairly well, but not a strategy for warm season crops and makes
> fall
>> ? ?cropping difficult.
>> ? ?- raised beds: works for a while until populations get established (1-2
>> ? ?years) in the beds and structural material
>> 
>> so now we've stopped mulching heavily in Zone I and use mostly on-site
>> generated mulch in Zone II, using only a scattered straw mulch to decrease
>> wind and sun evaporation and a focus on row covers instead of mulch to
>> achieve this function. ?any off-site woody mulch needs to be composted
>> through hot compost piles before being applied to the Zone I and II
> gardens.
>> ?and this seems to work well since there is no habitat for them in the
>> garden.
>> 
>> My conclusion is that sheet mulching (and deep mulching) is not an
> effective
>> strategy in our climate context for Zones I and II. ?Has anyone else found
>> this to be the case? ?or are we just applying the technique incorrectly?
>> 
>> some thoughts are
>> 
>> ? ?- that N is being tied up in the mulch, and the insects are relying
> upon
>> ? ?seedlings to fulfill this need, although this occurs in mulches with
>> ? ?relatively high manure content as well.
>> ? ?- natural foods and predators of these organisms are not in balance and
>> ? ?take years to come into balance (or are not present at all in our
> climate?)
>> ? ?- mulch increases the humidity in summer and decreases the cold in
> winter
>> ? ?which allows populations to grow rapidly out of balance with plants.
>> ? ?- there is some other factor that is causing plants to lack hardiness
> and
>> ? ?become attractive to these organisms
>> 
>> This situation has been very disheartening to many beginning Permaculture
>> gardeners who read about the wonderful benefits of mulch and have their
>> veggie gardens decimated. ?Any thought and suggestions would be very
> helpful
>> for gardeners in our region.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Neil
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