Dear all this may have been discussed before
Now in the end of Autumn there are natural mulching from leafs from the trees
I have chosen to remove some of the magnolia leafs from cyclamen plants. I wonder if it is needed as I expect cyclamen to be a woodland plant but it might not be in under foliage. In other places I have just thrown in leafs from the street on the bare soil around plants.
An other source to mulch is the compost that has been made during the year could that also be spread
The third source is the branches that are pruned during winter including the Christmas trees
Mulching is done as soil improvement, protection, reduced amounts of weeds, (possibly decoration) and in my case as deterrent of cats and slugs if Christmas trees are used.
Has anyone any proof of Christmas trees as deterrent of slugs?
My own experience is that cats are not fond of walking on pine needles and by that I got less visits of them and presents from them.
Is there any draw backs with mulching like that small plants are not able to get trough them. I know Ian chose to mulch/ chop his leaf in a leaf blower before spreading them so they will have less of a laminated effect. The layers could be thin so this should be less of a problem.
Last year I first used the branches of the Christmas trees of all the neighbors and in the spring I run the branches through a chopper. The branches were really deterring towards cats but slugs could be clinging to the branches and I did not see this when the branches had been chopped even after being there a while. This year I will mostly chop the Christmas trees and hope that the Winter will not require any protection.
Any experience out there regarding these things would be highly appreciated?
