Our fruit growing study tour of the USA got us thinking about mulch, as we saw a number of different approaches to it in our travels.

Of course it wasn’t hard to find orchards where the weeds have been completely sprayed out with herbicide, and mulch isn’t needed because there’s no plants left.

Yuk! Don’t do that!

The chemicals are bad for your health, the weeds grow back and need spraying again ($ straight from your pocket to the chemical companies), but worst of all – it’s really bad for the soil and kills the natural fertility system that trees need to get their nutrients (more $ straight from your pocket to the fertiliser company).

For young trees this is somewhat true – it’s definitely helpful to keep the weeds (or you could call them precious understory biodiversity plants) down while the tree’s roots are getting established, and we saw this in action at the Maine Heritage Orchard in Unity, Maine.

This orchard was planted not that many years ago on the site of a disused gravel pit, so major soil building and remediation has been the order of the day.

Hardwood chips have been extensively used, not only to mulch the trees when they were planted, but also to build paths, build soil more generally, and as an ongoing weed suppression tool even as the trees mature.

We saw a different approach in Michael Phillips’ orchard in New Hampshire.

He also uses woodchips on young trees, but welcomes a wide diversity of understory plants as the trees grow, using mulch in a more ad hoc way.

There is widespread agreement that if you are going to mulch, hardwood woodchips are preferable.

This is because fruit trees prefer a fungally dominant soil, as we explain in our Soil Biology and the Soil Food Web short course.

Understanding the amazing world of soil microbes that are key to the Natural Fertility System will change the way you think about soil, fertiliser and mulch forever.

So, to mulch, or not to mulch?

After everything we’ve seen, we’re still in favour of mulching while the trees are young, and then transitioning to either a natural or cultivated understory – a “living mulch”!