Help Ensure a Healthy Landscape Amid Climate Change
Climate change is here to stay, at least in our lifetimes. As a result, high heat and low water availability are going to severely stress plants of all kinds. That’s what plants contend with now and will experience more so in the future. Stressed plants are unhealthy because they are no longer able to produce the sugars and reserve food supplies for growth and defense. A plants root system is sometimes compared to our brains, and by comparison, largely controls most life functions. Keeping a plants root system healthy and happy ensures its long-term survival.
So, what do all plant root systems have in common? For most of them, they grow in the soil. What is not common, is the quality of the soils they are subjected to growing in. Soils provide the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics essential to healthy plant growth. The soil most of us have in our landscapes has been greatly disturbed through land development and the construction process.
All plants do well in soils that:
have macro- and micro pores that facilitate root growth, water movement and oxygen penetration.
contain all the mineral elements and pH level essential to plant growth.
contain an abundance of living organisms benefiting soil development and plant growth.
are rich in organic matter critical to building and maintaining soil structure and mineral content.
Our ability to repair soil disturbances is quite limited, given the fact that it had taken decades and centuries to create good topsoil. That doesn’t, however, mean that we shouldn’t try or that there is nothing that we can do to effect positive change. Composting and mulching in the garden, around landscape plants, and around trees can make a big difference in how much a plant struggles in these changing times.
If you have previously mulched around some of your landscape perennial flower beds, trees, and shrubs, why not expand it? Better yet, incorporate multiple plant or plant groupings into one larger mulched area! You not only greatly benefit those plants, but you also have less grass to mow.
If you have un-mulched plantings and trees, by all means, get them mulched! This is one situation where more is better! That is, the wider or larger the area you mulch, the more the plants will benefit. That does not mean the deeper the mulch the better. No mulch volcanoes please! Adequate mulching depth will be 2-3 inches deep, with no mulch build-up touching the trunk of trees or other woody plants.
If you have heavy clay or extremely sandy soils, apply a thin layer of compost before your mulch layer.
Besides the previously mentioned attributes of good topsoil, mulching benefits all plants by:
preventing soil compaction.
conserving soil moisture.
moderating soil temperatures.
replenishing soil organic matter and mineral elements.
creating a more biologically active root zone.
eliminates competition from other plants
is aesthetically pleasing.
Note: Use organic mulches only! (wood chips, pine bark, pine needles etc.)
Do not use lava rock, marble chips, pea gravel etc.