The right mulch can do wonders to improve your veggie garden.
Straw in particular offers a wide range of benefits that can make a drastic difference for the health and productivity of plants while saving you money and reducing labor.
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Continue reading to learn more about using straw mulch in your vegetable garden.
What Exactly Is Straw?
Before going into the advantages of using straw to mulch your vegetable garden, it is useful to understand what exactly it is that you will be working with.
“Straw” refers to the dry stalks that are left behind after crops such as barley, rice, oats, or wheat have been harvested. After the heads are removed to make grain, the stalks are dried and bundled in bales.
These bundles can be broken up and applied to the garden as mulch, or used as a material that is layered on the soil surface in a garden to provide a number of benefits to growing plants.
Benefits to the Garden
Straw is an ideal mulch material for many reasons. It is light and easy to work with, fairly inexpensive, and readily available from local farms and garden centers.
It helps regulate moisture and temperature, reduces necessary weeding, and builds healthy soil. All of this equals less labor for you!
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits:
Lock in Moisture
Straw is particularly beneficial for helping to keep the soil evenly moist, which means better drainage and more protection for plants in times of drought or flood.
Because it helps to slow evaporation, you will find yourself watering much less often – think once a week, rather than every day or two.
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