Sheet Mulching!!

We have been meaning to sheet mulch many areas of our garden. We finally started on a section of our front yard this past Friday. Sheet mulching, by mimicking what happens on a forest floor, is a method of soil improvement without tilling and for killing existing weeds. Basically, to sheet mulch, one lays down layers of manure, compostable weed barrier, natural mulching material such as leaves or seed free straw, more compost and a final layer of weed barrier such as grass clippings or fine wood chips. One is supposed to water well in between the layers.

The method sounds simple. Most books or people who have done it says the challenging part is the gathering of all the material needed before hand. I would agree with that. But now that we have done it, I'd say they should have warned that it also takes quite a few hours to lay the material down in layers. For us, it was really a full days' effort for an area about 8' x 45' in size. I started on Friday morning with cutting down the weeds and putting down a layer of manure and things like blood meal. Dennis and I continued with putting down the card board (the weed barrier layer) in the late afternoon. On Saturday, it was basically another full 6 hours of labor on Dennis' part to get it all done.

The completed sheet mulch

But what satisfaction it is when it was finally done! We have been admiring it since. I really hope this helps improve our soil condition - it is hard, hard clay we have.


We still have six bales of straw leftover, and our friend Sean and Christina promised to bring us more of the moving boxes they want to get rid of. So, with any luck, we'll probably get around to more areas in two weeks' time.