05/06/2026
Does mulching really matter? CP Landscape Depot has you covered. Available in Natural, Black, Brown, Red and Composted Pine Mulch.
Article from Ottawa Sun:
One of the biggest benefits of mulch is the way it constantly breaks down and adds life-giving organic matter to the soil. This happens slowly, but over time the effect is dramatic. Here at our place, we’ve kept our flower gardens mulched ever since we started. The result is a rich, dark soil with an organic matter content of about eight per cent. Just outside the garden, where the soil has never been mulched, organic matter is about three per cent. That’s a huge difference, and it shows what a steady supply of decomposing mulch can do. The soil in mulched areas becomes looser, richer, and better able to support healthy plant growth. Essentially, when you mulch, you’re feeding soil microbes and that has huge benefits.
Mulch also does a remarkable job of reducing w**d pressure. This is the biggest benefit for me. Bare soil is an open invitation for w**d seeds to sprout, but a layer of mulch blocks light and makes it much harder for w**ds to get established. This doesn’t mean w**ds never appear. Nature is persistent. Still, the difference is enormous. Instead of fighting a constant wave of w**ds, you deal with only the occasional one that manages to work its way through. And when that happens, it’s easy to pull out because the mulch keeps the soil underneath soft and loose.
Moisture retention is another huge advantage. Mulch shades the soil surface and reduces evaporation, which means the ground stays moist. While other gardens in our area are shrivelled and dry in summer, ours still look perfect and without watering. Plants growing in mulched soil thrive because their roots stay in a cooler and more evenly moist environment.
Aim to maintain three to four inches of fully settled mulch on the soil surface. At an absolute minimum, you want at least two inches, but more is usually better. In practice, this means applying five or six inches of depth when the mulch first goes down, because fresh mulch is fluffy and will compress. A proper settled depth is what gives you the soil-building, moisture-holding, and w**d-suppressing benefits that make mulch so worthwhile.
