The Benefits of Using Tree Chippings for Mulch for Large Yards!

• Mulch application, when used 2 to 4 inches deep, saves water by shading the soil and preventing evaporation during sunny times or just warmer parts of the day.
• It pays for itself! The addition of good mulch to your trees and landscape will pay for itself in water savings within 1 year.
• Mulch helps regulate soil temperature and slows evaporation and saves water and money by keeping direct sun off the soil and roots.
• It prevents water run-off.
• Mulch encourages deeper-growing roots which are less likely to damage hardscapes like curbs, driveways, landscape borders and sidewalks.
• Mulch transforms and creates a healthy soil environment where there was once only dry sand with the addition of a little irrigation.

Healthy soil environments will have increased earthworm activity and increased overall biological activity, making the soil around your trees better able to develop that special relationship with the tree roots that makes trees healthier and happier. It encourages Myocorrhizal fungi which is the building block of the tree or plant root’s relationship to the soil.

And mulch helps saves water because of all of these reasons:
In turn it helps keep the bottoms of the trees cooler, making respiration more efficient for the trees. Respiration is when the tree takes its created and stored energy, and opens and unpacks it.

What is Mulch?

The mulch we’re talking about here is chopped up trees. Other organic plants and animals can also be mulched and brought up to heat, and composted, but the mulch we are dealing with is chopped up trees. Mulch includes varied pieces of roots, shoots, twigs, leaves and pieces of wood from the brush chipping activities that go on daily with tree service activities.

Mulch goes into the tree service truck and is then delivered directly to a customer to fill an order, or is brought to a central yard where it is dumped into a pile. As soon as the tree parts are chipped and thrown into the back of the dump truck the process of decomposition begins. It is a special process. The organic elements begin the decomposition process which cleans the material of pathogens and begins to heat and distribute moisture throughout the pile. The breaking down and beginning of sterilization is a special process that makes it the best organic product to use to amend your trees or other landscape features. The mulch is usually moved around at the yard to get it consolidated to take up less real estate. That process of stirring it or moving it stirs the organic break-down of nutrients and moisture, further helping it become more clean of unwanted fungi or undesirable things.

We’ve all witnessed a sandy, weedy piece of land or front yard turned into a more organic, uniform, improved-looking piece of yard that needs nothing more than a border of any kind to create what is now a planter. A place where further landscape activities can begin. An improved piece of land is always the result.

What is Not Mulch

Mulch is not Eucalytpus grindings which are prevalent in Arroyo Grande and Nipomo because of the removal and clearing of Eucalyptus Trees. The grindings that come from the grinding process are not cut and of varied sizes and shapes, retaining the needed properties, they are ground and are more like fibers and act like fibers. They do not have the ability to begin the heating and decomposing process like good arborist mulch or chopped trees. This product is better used on slopes to cover sand and plantings to help with erosion control.

Bark nuggets or gravel or decomposed granite is not mulch and are sterile and free of any of the organic qualities of real mulch.

More reasons mulch is so helpful, saves money and water and more:

• Helps the trees cope with heat.
• Keeps many weeds from growing and making them easier to remove when they do grow.
• Allows easy monitoring of the soil moisture by making it very easy to move aside a little mulch to see whether the soil is wetter or drier to allow for adjustment of the irrigation.
• Improves the conditions for roots by encouraging them tp grow deeper, which also helps prevent hardscape damage from the tree’s roots which again saves money.
• Keeps trees and landscape plants healthier, thereby allowing them to deal with insect and other disease problems that occur.
• As you can see there is no end to the benefits of using mulch or tree chippings of the right kind in your yards and landscapes during these times of climate change.