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Beware of Toxic Mulch by: Michael McGroarty
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| Saturday, December 27, 2008 |
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Mulching beds has become extremely popular these days, and mulch can be very beneficial for your plants and soil in your planting beds, but there are things you need to look.
Here in Ohio the most popular type of mulch that people use is shredded bark mulch of wood, which is a byproduct of the wood industry. When they move logs to the sawmill the first thing they do is debark them. Years ago the bark was a huge problem for plants because it does not seem to be a useful purpose for it, until people realized that it had hidden benefits. Even to this day, the bark is a headache for sawmills, and they do not understand how to properly manage.
They like to pile it as high as they can so it takes up less space in their backyard. The mulch tends to really save during the winter months because there is little demand. For plants of the pile mulch high, they literally have to drive large front end loaders up onto the pile. Of course, the weight of these large machines compact mulch in the stack, and it can become a huge problem for you or me, if we happen to have some mulch were stacked too high, too compact and tight.
When trees are first debarked the mulch is fairly fresh, and must decompose before we dare use around our plants. The process of decomposition and oxygen requires the flow of air into the pile. When the mulch is compacted too tight, this air flow can not take place, and that the mulch continues to decompose, it becomes extremely hot as the organic matter ferments. Sometimes, extreme heat combined with the inability to release the heat can cause the battery to catch fire by spontaneous combustion.
In other cases, the mulch heats up, can not release the gas, and the mulch actually becomes toxic. When this occurs the mulch develops an overbearing odor that will take your breath away as you dive into the pile. When disseminating this toxic mulch around your plants the gas it contains is released, and this gas can and will burn your plants.
It happened to me twice. Once in my own house, and once on a job I was doing for a client. This toxic mulch is very powerful. We have reversed a bit of mulch in the foliage of a Dwarf Alberta Spruce that we were mulching around, and only a few minutes later brushed the mulch the plant. The next day my customer noticed that one side of the plant was brown. The mulch has been there for only a matter of minutes.
Not only do I have to replace the Dwarf Alberta Spruce, but the mulch also damaged at least 10 other plants that I had to replace. I saw where someone once ordered a truck load of mulch, he has thrown in their entry, and that the toxic mulch slid out of the bucket on the asphalt the toxic gas which was published on the set lawn next to the aisle.
The gas, not the mulch, turned the grass brown next to the mulch pile.
This same person spread several yards of mulch around their house before they realized the problem, and it ruined many of their facilities.
Now here's the most difficult trying to explain how to identify toxic mulch. He has a very strong odor that will take your breath away. But again almost all mulch is a powerful smell. This is very different from your typical mulch smell, but I can not explain it better.
The mulch looks perfectly normal, maybe a little darker than usual. If you suspect a problem with the mulch you take a couple of shovels full, and place it around an inexpensive plant. Maybe just a couple of flowers. By this test, use a straw mulch inside the cell and not on the edges. The mulch on the edge of the battery is more than likely released most of the toxic gases that took place in May.
If, after 24 hours, the plants are in agreement, the mulch should go. The purpose of this article is not to cause panic at the mulch yard, but toxic mulch can do serious damage. At my house it burned the law leaves some plants in my landscape, and burned the grass beside the bed all the way around the house. It looked like someone took a torch and burned the grass about 2 "all around the bed. If I had not seen with my own eyes, I would not have believed. |
posted by neptunus @ 5:41 PM
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