The Danger Of Buying Toxic Mulch - And The Way To Avoid The Pitfalls

Mulching, at present, has become popular, due to the benefits it brings to the plants and soil in your garden beds. However, in certain regions you do need to be careful. That's because of the main ingredient of a widely used type of mulch in these parts being a shredded sawmill waste product, hardwood bark. The sawmills had difficulties dumping the waste bark which resulted from the procedure of denuding the logs before sawing them.

While using bark to make mulch was a handy option for the lumber yards, but it's not perfect. The saw mills pile the bark up high to avoid wasting space, and with little demand for the mulch in winter the piles get really high. The hazard for your backyard garden arises from the mulch being compacted too tightly by the front end loaders having to drive up onto the heaps. The bark matter won't decompose unless it's supplied with oxygen, and time, which is achieved by air passing through it. If it's overly compacted there is no air flow, causing the mulch to become extremely hot as it decomposes, even to the point of bursting into flames.

The mulch becomes toxic on account of the build-up of the hot gases which cannot get away. This can result in a foul odor, as you dig into the stack, and a bigger problem as you spread it around your plants. Your plants can be burn-damaged by the hot, poisonous gas which escapes from the mulch. Distribute the noxious mulch surrounding the plants, and in a matter of minutes they may be brown. In the event you happen to get a mulch stack like this and it gets put on your yard it could turn the grass brown. The fact is that you will only recognize that the mulch was toxic when you discover the undesirable "browning of the green."

The unhealthy mulch carries a strong odor once you get down to it in the pile, but so does the good mulch, and the odor is different, but you may not be able to tell the difference. An additional pointer is that bad mulch is a bit darker, and if this alerts you to a potential problem you can test it by placing some around a plant that you don't value too much. When doing this make certain you take mulch from much closer the center than the surface of the pile. Assuming nothing has happened to the plants for more than 24 hours, the mulch really should be fine.

Now this probably isn't really that major of a problem, but when it happens to you, you probably would have liked to know about it. It may not make you too pleased to put something on your plants, and later learn they were burned. Mulching is good for your backyard and your plants, but it is good to understand that there is bad mulch, so buy your mulch from a reputable place that stands behind their product.