As I have mentioned previously mulching has been a weak point in my gardening quests. This became very apparent when I read Mulching Day over at Urban Cultivation very early on in my gardening quest. Lee talked about the many benefits of mulching and chose to use store bought sugar cane mulch. I agree with the benefits of mulching and am primarlly concerned with the water conservation aspects. I was also keen to avoid having to purchase mulch, which after all is simply shredded garden litter and prunings.
So I had a look at how I could produce my own and decided that I needed a garden shredder. As luck would have it my company runs a rewards scheme that is linked to the Wish List site. Within the site was a Ryobi 2400w electric garden shredder that I had enough reward points to obtain. So after consultation with socko I placed my order and was waiting for its arrival somewhat anxiously.
On Friday my new toy arrived. After unpacking the box and assembling the unit, only a few screws, I set about mulching. Where the unit was assembled was near a stack of wood that is used during winter in the fire pit, or the traditional wood burning barbecue. As we have little intention of stoking either in the midst of summer I tested the unit with this material.
Within a half to three quarters of an hour I had a good supply of fresh mulch to apply during my watering run. So the mulch was applied to about 25% of the front garden. The capsicums, chillis, tomatoes, kangaroo paw, rosemary, egg plant, and frangipani’s were the beneficiaries on the run. The reason these plants were picked was that their pots always seem to be the driest upon inspection. Regularly requiring a good soak, and not just a casual maintenance watering. Also, many of these plants are currently bearing fruit, and I do not want to lose that valuable produce because the plants were missing out on the precious water.
Due to a wealth of prunings I intended to get back to mulching on Saturday. However, due to me having to manage several web site issues by the time I was in a position to resume mulching it was dusk. I decided that Sunday would be mulching day instead.
As such, I intended spending the whole day performing this task with my new toy, however the weather played havoc with those plans. First it was too hot to get enthused about leaving the air conditioning and performing such a physical task. When I checked the thermometer on the weather vane it read 41 degress celsius, this is a bit of a misleading reading due the weather vanes positioning is in direct sun. Then when the heat broke, it quickly turned into thunder storms and the reading plummeted to 29 degrees celsius in an hour. So all in all I got about an hour of mulching in. It was enough to mulch half the front garden. So there is about 25% of the front, and the entire back vegetable garden to do.
The Ryobi garden mulcher has lived up to expectations, and in some ways exceeded them. I can see that it is, and will continue to be, a valuable garden tool. As valuable as the Homelite Mighty Lite Line Trimmer. I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a home mulching solution. It will do most small prunings with ease and produce a great mulch to spread on the garden and protect from weeds and save water.
The rain in the evening has been a benefit to the garden, and the mulch will trap that goodness in. I also have a new product to trial soon that is essentially a bag that holds 1.2 litres of water. I will not be giving anything further away at this stage, but it looks like a really good true blue Australian product.
