I am a massive fan of mulch - it took me a while to come around to the idea of mulching though as I really loved the look of rich brown soil - especially after a weeding and water!
It was a few years ago when I really started getting into gardening and was battling with the Canterbury Norwest winds that I decided to finally ‘give in’ and give it a go - first with building up thin layers of grass clippings - the grass clippings worked well, I just put on a thin layer each time we mowed the lawn so it was able to dry out in-situ. I had a read about the possibility of nitrogen stealing doing it this way, but also read that by doing thin layers in a home garden it really was so minuscule there was no worry.
I did that for a while, but what I didn’t like was how all the vegetables had bits of grass on them that I had to wash off!
I then brought a bale of pea-straw as a fundraiser and haven’t looked back - here in Canterbuty there are lots of peas grown, so a bale of pea-straw is relatively inexpensive (most recently I paid $60 for a massive spray free bale which is about 10 bales worth), it interlocks well to stay in place during our summer winds and while the birds to like to play in it, it mainly stays in place or doesn’t take too much to tuck a handful of it back in.
Another bonus of the pea-straw is that while the birds seem to decimate any peas I try and grow in my vegetable garden - since I have left the bale outside in the rain, I have a lovely crop of peas growing down the side of my house!
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