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Transcript: I’ve gotten a ton of questions this fall about mulching pros and cons. “Do we mulch with leaves with straw? Do we mulch at all? Do we put row cover on instead?” And, here are a few things to keep in mind. If it’s getting late, and it’s starting to snow, certainly prior to there being snow on the beds themselves, but if it’s really getting late and you don’t have leaves already processed or straw on hand, I highly recommend simply putting a piece of row cover if you have it, over your bed. Make sure that it’s nice and taut so that if there isn’t a snow cover, all of a sudden, it’s not flapping in the wind, and being tempted to fly away in your winter winds. So I highly recommend simply putting on that row cover as a means of moderating that freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw that is going to be happening in the fall and then in the spring, as the temperatures rise above freezing and dip back below.
Once the snow really comes, and once it’s consistently below freezing, you don’t have to worry about it nearly as much. And that is of course the quick and easy way to do it with the row cover. It’s awesome. If you do have that mulch, whether it’s grass clippings, straw, old moldy hay, chipped mulch, leaves is the dream. All those things are ideal. And any combination is great. Because it’s not only protecting you from that freeze thaw freeze thaw cycle. It’s also increasing the nutrients and building your soil. So, you’re feeding your garlic and you’re feeding your soil for the coming seasons as well.
So if you can at all manage to put living mulches like straw and grass clippings, and chips, shredded leaves, that is the dream. But if you don’t have them on hand, and it’s getting colder by the day, the snow is coming and you have row cover, put the row cover on and know that that will be awesome for your garlic as well.
And again, you’re really making sure with those covers, whether it’s the row cover or a mulch, you’re really just ensuring that those freeze thaw freeze thaw cycles aren’t lifting the cloves from deep in the ground to the surface of the ground. It’s cloves when they hit that surface, the dry desiccating Winds of Winter especially if you don’t have a glorious snow cover, that’s going to kill your garlic more than any other temperature. It’s going to be those drying desiccating winds. And so the more you can keep your garlic deep in the ground, the better it will be and that is the function of mulch, whether it’s leaf mulch or whether it’s your row cover.
So yes, keep it simple with your row cover. Or if you have mulch on hand you can have your cake and eat it too by increasing the nutrient capacity of your soil and for any of your garlic crop and acting as a mulch to protect them over the winter with something like leaves and straw.
