Lemongrass Mulch

Just about a year after I planted out many little lemongrasses, for the specific purpose of growing some of our own mulch, it was time to give them a haircut! 

The abundant, strappy leaves of lemongrass.

One of the little lemongrasses I planted last April.

Lemongrass grows well in our climate and has loved the hot and wet conditions of the Summer just gone. Each thriving plant has provided an abundance of long, strappy leaves for us to chop and use as mulch.

One year's growth and ready for a haircut!

While we predominately grow lemongrass as a source of mulch, it has lots of great uses as Morag Gamble explains in this post over at her blog,  Our Permaculture Life.  

Roughly chopped!

I cut each lemongrass clump back quite a bit. As I worked, a lovely lemony scent filled the air and masses of chopped leaves dropped onto the ground. I left some of this to cover and protect the soil around the lemongrasses themselves and gathered up the rest in my trusty wheelbarrow to move to an area of the garden that needed some new mulch.

A barrow load of homegrown lemongrass mulch.

A blanket of lemongrass mulch around the mandarin tree.

A blanket of lemongrass leaves now covers the soil around our mandarin tree. This loose tangle of strappy mulch will allow plenty of water to seep through while protecting the soil and nourishing it as it breaks down over time. A second, lighter "trim" of our lemongrass will yield a little more of this mulch for use in our garden too before I leave the clumps to regrow their long, strappy hair-dos!

Meg

p.s. The other plant we chose to grow as a mulch, Canna Lily or Queensland Arrowroot, is also doing well. I will need to chop them back soon too. More free mulch!

A little Canna Lily just beginning to grow.

One year of growth.

Making More Mulch

Laying down mulch over the soil in a garden has many benefits but it can be quite expensive if you have to buy it in regularly to cover a large area. The solution to cutting down that expense is to grow some of your own mulches.

Sugar cane mulch helps to protect the soil around seedlings like this little lettuce.

At our place, we have regularly used (and had to buy) sugar cane and lucerne mulches for our garden beds and veggie patch plus a coarser bark for laying down around native plants. We are hoping to cut down on how much of this mulch we need to buy, especially for the garden beds where shrubs and flowers are the predominate plantings. We are going to grow and make some of our own mulch instead!

The long, dry leaves of lemongrass laid around the base of a native raspberry plant.

I learnt a lot more about plants that I can grow for mulches at the Introduction to Permaculture course I completed in at the City Farm recently. Our teacher for this course, Morag Gamble, has this great list of plants you can grow as/for mulch over on her blog, Our Permaculture Life. At our place, in our suburban garden, we've chosen to plant more lemongrass and to start growing Canna Lily (Queensland Arrowroot variety) to increase the amount of our own mulch available for use in our garden.

One of many newly planted lemongrasses in our garden.

Lemongrass and Canna Lily grow quite abundantly in our climate so they are very suitable as "chop and drop" mulches, where you simply cut back the plants and let the leaves/stems fall to cover the soil. 

A new Canna Lily leaf emerges just weeks after planting divided rhizomes.

We also have an abundance of prunings, from the shrubs that grow well in our garden, at various times of the year. To make better use of these for mulch, we decided to invest in a little mulching machine. We used some gift cards we had been given by family last Christmas to put towards the cost of our new mulcher. 

Our new mulching machine.

By growing more plants for mulches and by putting suitable garden clippings through our little mulcher, we should save some money and also make better use of the organic material our own garden supplies us with. 

Do you grow plants for mulch in your garden?

Meg