Mulching Is For the Birds

Many butterflies only feed from a specific plant.

A book on raising plants to attract birds made this point - A mulched garden will draw many birds, because they will search for food just beneath the layer of organic matter.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Creation Zone.

Exhibit A - Picture if you will an unusual bush, not just any bush, but a very special bush. The gardener has placed a layer of mulch underneath - no soil or weeds are visible through this layer.

Exhibit B - In contrast, imagine the typical American plant, standing alone with all the leaf litter cleared and raked away to the soil below. Weeds have also been removed, since they grow where sun reaches bare soil.

The Monarch lays its eggs on milkweed and the related butterfly weed.

The first plant will always have moist soil underneath, because wind and sun have been blocked from drying the soil. Besides that, rotting organic matter will hold moisture while it is decaying. Since the sun is blocked, the recycling soil creatures can toil in the shade, shredding the mulch. Earthworms will be active in rising to the surface for food and restroom facilities, creating tunnels for air, root penetration, and rain channels.

Since the mulch favors the plant, more material will rain down to feed the mulch layer, as leaves form, age, decay, and drop off.

The lawnmower will not be pushed beneath the bush, because no one wants to choke the blade with mulch. There are no weeds or grass to cut where mulch is placed.

The second plant exposes its best soil, the top soil, to wind and water erosion. That soil is always dry from sun and wind evaporation. Soil creatures will work underneath, but only during bankers' hours for decay, when darkness reigns and they are safe.

The bush will need more watering, so it will be somewhat hampered by mixing chlorinated city water with rain water. Only the rain brings fixed nitrogen to green up the plant and promote growth. My mother was famous for her classroom flowers that always bloomed. She stored the water to let it evaporate the chlorine out - before she put it on her plants.

Birds may nest in this bush but will not feed much beneath it. They sleep when the soil creatures come out to feed in the darkness.

Since weeds and grass continue to grow underneath the bush, the mulch-free gardener will disturb the soil with various tools for stopping the beneficial action of soil creatures - the lawnmower, the rake, and the three-toothed hoe.

Bluebirds love suet because they are insect eating birds.

Trapping the Nutrition
When the soil population is increased, many good things happen at once.

• Moisture is held in the top twelve inches of soil, part of each bacterium, nematode, fungus, earthworm, ant, spider, sowbug, pillbug, and springtail. 
• A billion creatures here, a billion creatures there - it starts to add up. No springtail is an island, each to his own. Every springtail  is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a bug be washed away by the sea, America is the less.
• The nutrients pass from creature to creature instead of being drained from the soil. That bag of fertilizer ends up in the water table, with only a little of the nitrogen in the soil. Rainwater's nitrogen is trapped in the root layer and fed into the plants' roots by fungus.
• The soil population attracts a larger and healthier bird population to keep harmful insects under control.

God is in charge of the soil, in spite of man's worst efforts, so plants continue to grow in the wreckage caused by misinformed gardeners, who do more work for fewer results, spending a lot more money.

Dandelion seeds feed birds, and the down parachutes line their nests. Leave that herb alone, you Scotts Weed and Feed slave!

From Crabgrass to Green Manure
I had a patch of garden go wild with crabgrass - not much different from entire rose gardens not far from our house. My excuse was the fence where water dripped down for the pole bean crop. Lacking mulch, the weeds flourished. Instead of hacking, thrashing, and cutting through the jungle, which would have ended the bean crop, I threw down soggy masses of newspapers, which blocked the sunlight and ended the brief reign of crabgrass. They turned into green manure. The pole beans continue to produce.

That took five minutes work.

Keeping organic matter in the yard will increase the population fed by decomposition. Adding organic matter will also be beneficial.

These laws of Creations were fixed at the beginning, with a perfect balance between prey and predators,

Butterfly weed is a beautiful flower that favors the Monarch.