RSS
Home
Stop the mulch madness
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Mountain mulching causes tree distress
Call them what you will, volcanos, mountains or Irish thatched roof syndrome, mulching trees in the spring, especially from the “mow and blow” crews that come in like grasshoppers and leave their mark around trunks piled higher than a dog can lift his leg, are causing arboreal damage.
Trunk damage from a volcano
Richard Murray, author of Tree Biology Notebook, An Introduction to the Science and Ecology of Trees uses the flavorful Irish thatched roof syndrome because as he says, “That kind of mulching keeps the moisture and air out preventing natural processes in the soil to do their job.” Instead of providing protection, the mounded piles literally suffocate the roots over a long period of time causing rotting bark, insect infestation and tree death. And this is what people pay good money for.
Murray offers a simple definition of mulch; leaf layers (again, those things we pay people to remove from our yards in the fall) mixed with light layers of aged wood chips. “Thick layers of shredded bark doesn’t fall into that category,” he says.
Healthy tree without mulch
Photos: Edd Barrows, Georgetown
University Laboratory of Entomology
and Biodiversity
Georgetown Professor Edward Barrows asks rhetorically, “Tree butt-rot mulching is spreading like the Bubonic Plague around here. What’s going on?” As Director of the Georgetown Center for the Environment, his concern is a loss of habitat through careless treatment of an important part of the local biodiversity. He advises the correct way to mulch a tree by making a circular ridge of mulch (about 1 inch high) at a tree’s surface root zone and very lightly mulch the saucer area. This saucer traps rainwater for the roots. Mulch should not contact a tree trunk so that the base of the trunk will remain healthy.
Save a tree and stop the mulch madness.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
