Compost Mulch – Improve Your Gardens Soil Structure While Mulching

Compost makes a excellent mulch and can supply many benefits to your gardens soil. It is full of organic matter that will supply nutrients to feed the soil for your plants, improve soil structure, control weeds, help prevent plant disease and provide a excellent environment for beneficial insects.

The use of compost as a mulch is a great way to keep the community of life active that is living in your gardens soil working for you and improving the soils structure. Organic matter as a mulch or mixed into the soil is what keeps the food web in an organic garden going. It is the key to having a good healthy soil structure. Leaves also used for composting makes excellent mulch. They are best used after shredding. Whole leaves mat down when they aren’t shredded preventing water and air from getting to the soil.

Mulching your plants with a three to four inch layer of compost will supply the nutrients needed for your plants to thrive. A good nutrient rich humus compost is a slow release fertilizer. It will add nutrients to the soil over a long period of time keeping your plants healthy. It is also a good defense against insects and disease. Creating and environment that will keep beneficial insects living in your soil and mulch is the best natural method of organic insect control.

Compost mulch is ideal for a no-till garden. It provides the perfect environment for arthropods to survive by providing them with a full time food source and moist living conditions that they need.