Shocking Mistake with Mulch in the Garden
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- čas přidán 21. 04. 2023
- Shocking Mistake with Mulch in the Garden
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Byther Farm is a small organic homestead, being designed and managed using permaculture practices. We aim for self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables for increased self reliance and better resilience to the modern world. I recognise that we are unlikely to be truly self sufficient, but do the best we can. I share our home with my loving husband, Mr J and our cat, Monty.
We are a fifty-something couple who live on a smallholding in Carmarthenshire, Wales. We are going green and creating a gentler, cleaner and more healthy life for our family.
Having had a highly successful smallholding in Monmouthshire, we hope to recreate the abundance at our new home. There will be a large organic kitchen garden with no dig gardening raised beds and young food forest in which to grown our fruit and vegetables.
We keep a few sheep and Aylesbury ducks.
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I loved the weather segment Liz! For me, I'm done with landscape fabric or weed block of any sort. It's cardboard and grass clippings for me. Blessings 🌻
Oh what a bloody nightmare. Why does oxo degradable even exist??!? Never heard of it. Great video regardless liz. Hopefully you've got it before the membrane has broken down too much 🤞
I learned last year that bio degradable plastic is not much better than normal plastic. So I avoid plastic in the garden as much as I can.
I haven't found many products with biodegradable plastic, I'll certainly be avoiding anything that's oxodegradable from now on.
Isn't it time that things like that are made illegal? We all know the harm they cause, so why on earth do we have to fight to make sure we are doing the right thing?
invest in a woodchipper and grow your own mulch. Buddleia, elderberry, willow and many other shrubs can be cut to the ground yearly and harvested. Also useful for hedgerow harvesting and coppicing. Grass walkways look good and can be mowed which provides mulch for the beds.
Thank you for the reminder to question everything going in the garden 😢
Thank you for warning other gardeners like me doing the same mistake
Hello Liz, regarding cardboard we have discovered our local builders merchant /hardware shop had absolutely loads of cardboard and were very happy for us to take it away, it’s like an Aladdin’s cave of tools and boots and all sorts of interesting bits and bobs on our local industrial estate, the boxes were usually huge too, not like from the supermarket, if you have anything like that close by? Thank you for passing on that experience with the membrane xx
I find that every business in our tiny town uses heaps of cardboard boxes, and it is a weekly disposal problem for them. I collect all the cardboard from just one cafe, and it is more than I can use on a large area. Worms and other soil life just love a thick layer of cardboard. It becomes soil fairly soon.
I keep a 44 gallon drum filled with water, and dunk all cardboard in it before use, with the corrugations running vertically. When bubbles stop rising, I know it is thoroughly wet inside and out.
Pulling tape off can be very tedious, but less expensive than buying rolls of membrane of any type.
After almost breaking my back removing huge areas of the woven membrane welded to the soil by wiry twitch roots that just grew straight through it, I vowed never to have membrane of any type again.
I also use a thick layer of wood chips when I can get them, but that is difficult. I always seem to be at the bottom of a long list.
Another alternative which works well, is a very thick layer of straw. A local farmer sells me rain damaged big round bales of straw for $20. These weigh about 300 kg, and once opened, contain a huge volume of lovely organic weed free mulch that is easily moved with a pitchfork and wheelbarrow or tarpaulin. Some grain does germinate in it, but that is not a problem. It pulls out easily.
That was really helpful, thanks.
Oh Liz, I'm so sorry that this has happened! I really hope you can remove most of it without it being too much of a pain in the aspidistra! As if there isn't already enough work to do in a garden at this time of year. And, of course, this is a time sensitive job before it breaks up too much xxx
My daughter said that they call it eco-friendly because they are recycling the product, not because people want that in their soil.
Thank you for your honesty. What a disaster. 😢
I've had some replacement plastic sheets for the greenhouse that was oxo-degradable and to this day i'm always finding microplastic shards in the soil around the garden.
Oh dear Liz, thanks for sharing that problem , it’s going to need careful digging to remove all that horrid plastic and I’m sure it’s the last thing you and Mr J needed . ❤️
thank you for sharing this info about OX O-DEGRADABLE MATERIAL
..agree, one would think if searching for an item in a certain category you will be getting what you want. My granny would say "Let the buyer be aware". Guess the buyer does need to do more research before buying. Sorry this happened to you,and thank you for sharing before others fall into that same mess.
That must be terribly frustrating. Good luck trying to remove it!
When I was starting my garden last year, I also struggled to get hold of enough cardboard. In the end, I only had enough to cover around a third of the growing space I planned for that year. But then it occurred to me that I had lots of curtains that the lady who sold me the house had left behind. Some were manmade fibres, but I had quite a few that were 100% cotton and they worked brilliantly as a base layer for my beds. My only regret is that I didn't unpick the tops and hems as it turns out that the thread was definitely not pure cotton. However, overall I really recommend cotton sheets/curtains (possibly available from friends/family or charity shops) as they were much easier and quicker to put down than lots of bits of cardboard and don't move around while the compost is being spread out over them. My sheets have mostly decomposed a year later, but the compost on top is thick enough that I'm not getting weeds growing up (just seeds landing on the top and growing down). I'm expanding my growing area this year, but haven't had the sense to hunt down more cotton sheets so I'm back to using every spare bit of cardboard and paper I've gathered over the last year. It's a much messier job, especially on a windy day!
I do this too. My garden has old wool blankets, towels, and sheets under the compost and mulch, lol. I will never again buy any sort of black weed fabric. I also use sheer, net curtains as insect netting on my brassicas. Doesn't seem to do any harm.
What a great tip! I have lots of top sheets I don't use!
sooo good that you share your mistake. We can all learn, thank you and good luck cleaning up the terrain....
Oh no Liz sorry to hear this has happened 😞 but thanks for sharing your experience. I often have my tree surgeons drop off wood chip for me and my neighbours. If they have any excess I’ll keep you in mind and contact you to see if you need any and may be a handy contact for you. (Anna Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire 🤗)
Sorry to hear LIZ, if you go to any bike store, they have HEAPS of large cardboard boxes.
sounds like you're being really hard on yourself Liz! And that maybe you are missing your old garden as it doesn't have this stuff in it? Hugs! You are doing so much, winning in so many ways... And leading the way for other people like me.
So thank you, for doing all this. For highlighting the risk of this membrane. And for still going, still doing and moving forward... We are all following you and doing better for your input. More hugs x
Mannnnn that is frustrating! I can only imagine how you feel. That stuff does not belong in the eco friendly section of the website indeed.
Im so sorry and hope you get some compensation to help in the clear out. Thank you for making us aware. Best wishes x
yes, greenwashing and I"m so sorry you now have to deal with removing the impossibly fine plastic. Why ever is this type of stuff allowed to be manufactured, causing long term damage wherever it is used. Well, we know why. Thank you Liz for passing on your experiences so others wont go there, and for talking to the company running the website through which you purchased the stuff.
So sorry, what a mess. I wish you the best with fixing it!
Ah Liz that is devastating. It’s so easy to do though because we should be able to trust what we’re buying
Bummer! I really feel for you. Hope you are able to clean up your mistake without too much pain and misery.
There is a massive difference between biodegradable and compostable. No petrochemical based plastic composts, just breaks down into smaller pieces of plastic. Compostable can be put in the compost bin, made of things like corn starch which will break right down.
What a horrible experience. I guess they are trying to find any way they can to get rid of all the plastic waste we make. So sad for you and thanks for warning all of us.
Oh that is soul destroying to put something so toxic on your land and have to try and deal with it. I hadn’t heard of this term either, I will definitely watch out for it from now on.
Microplastics are the worst. I'm not entirely anti-plastic in general in the garden - I do make the most of tarping beds, and have a gigantic polytunnel. But I've got problems from various non-UV resistant plastics disintegrating that were used by previous owners (and myself), for which I'm stuck with the consequences of forever - woven builders bags, old woven tarps fraying etc.
It does make me think twice about use of plastics in the future. Hope you manage to mitigate the problems from yours.
I’m so sorry this has happened. I am still finding plastic all over our property from the previous owner and we’ve been here for 22 years! Nasty stuff. Due diligence is definitely called for.
Thanks Liz for the info. Always learning and we learn more from these videos. People will be more vigilant from this. Thank you for being so informative.
On Bob Tanem in the Garden radio show people and me are getting transplant ready size plants, BUT they are going to seed before you even get to any sort of maturity.
I used Coco coir mixed with perilite and my own leaf matter. Last year they were dollhouse size tiny harvests. Really unbelievable, we lived here 55 years. Good luck ...the monster$ are everywhere
Thanks, it's brave to admit your mistakes, and the information about oxo-degradable is important. (Given the emerging information about micro plastics I'm not sure why it's even legal) As is the advice - do your own research! Cheers Liz
Oxodegradable plastics are banned in the EU, this was supported by UK when it was first introduced as an idea. But because of Brexit, UK chose not to enforce it when it came into law across EU. I have opinions about this (Brexit and many other things), but I'm trying to keep them to myself because this is not a politics channel!
OMFG. Yup, suspect I agree. Cheers, have a great day.
Oh, no! That must be disheartening. This is why I don't like using any sort of fabric which they claim is degradable. It's hard to get hold of woodchips here in SW Scotland where we are, but I am going to try my best to find more. I have been letting the grass grow pretty tall and then cutting it. I plan to use it as mulch. Same with the fallen leaves on the property. Of course all these are not enough, but they are better than using any sort of membrane. I hope you find more natural mulch in your area. Take care!
Awww Liz I'm absolutely gutted for you 😢 I would be so angry at myself if it was me and it's not a small area either. For cardboard what I tend to do is ask in local area FB groups if anyone has any moving boxes etc and usually get quite a few for what I need it for.
In this world today of greed how do we ever trust anything anymore? That's messing with people's lives when they think they're doing something that's healthy for them only to find out you've been lied to. And they get away with it!! So frustrating. Thank you Liz for pointing this out to us. I'm going out to my garden shed and seeing what the tag says on the new weed block fabric I just bought. Love your channel, thank you again ;)
Heart goes out to you! So much hard work. Thank you for letting us learn.
Oh goodness, that puff made me jump and giggle 😂 Thank you for an informative and funny video, Liz
Thanks for the heads up.
Gosh how awful for you 😕 thanks too for sharing this because I’m sure you will save a few gardens at least from this product. The manufacturer might have clearly labeled but it seems criminal the vendor listed it under environmentally friendly?! The least they could do is pay for the cleanup to your land surely? Good luck with getting rid of it and thx again for sharing.
I have the same issue with my garden, but the plastic came in with the soil I purchased. I bought a "seived garden compost" that was advertised as straight organic compost. After the winter and some rain, I'm finding tons and tons of chunks of plastic in the garden. It looks like whole pots and old junk got mulched up into it along with the organic matter. And... there's just nothing I can do to remove it all now. At this point I'm just trying to bury it with mulch and homemade compost.
Love your channel; new subscriber.
This is what I do for my paths without a membrane, rather just using cardboard. I pile the wood chip very thick and the next year...maybe two years, I use it for my beds then re-mulch the pathways.
Thanks Liz , your videos are inspiring and so calming. Have great afternoon 😀
I cant think of a situation when someone would want plastic particles in their soil. It's a product that has no purpose in the garden industry.
I’m sure some sellers pull the wool over our eyes on purpose, I feel for you what a nightmare that’s no small feat to scrape all that lot up 😮
I put woven weed barrier under all my hedges down the Smallholding, I’m now slowly removing it as it’s starting to fray along the edges leaving long strips of plastic everywhere 🤦♂️
Omgosh, I'm so sorry. Thanks for the warning. 😢
Excellent video! I learned a lot from your experience.
Liz, Thanks so much for the heads up. I have several areas of our garden that need to be covered before planting. I certainly will be vigilant about researching before buying any weed suppressant fabric. I have your new book and love it. A treat to read after A a day in the garden.
Horrible greenwashing. It should not be legal to sell.
In Guernsey we use wood chips and we pay about £100 for about 2 x 1 ton bags and that’s mates rates! Non mates rates is about £175
Man,that company needs to pay to fix that ground,what a disaster!
I’m so sorry to hear that happened! That is so frustrating. Hopefully you can get it cleaned up soon. Best of luck
Oh no 😮 thats devastating 😵💫 thanks for sharing and helping us to avoid this happening to us 🙏
I'm so very sorry that you're having to deal with this issue! I agree, it should not have been listed as it was on the website.
So sorry to hear that Liz. Thank you so much for sharing. I had a similar problem last year with a tarpaulin I had bought to cover garden furniture over the winter. Totally my fault and so hard to clear up effectively. I am much more careful to research what my tarpaulins are made of now. Thanks to you I know now to steer clear of any OXO degradable materials too.
Love it... Trying here that too with cardboard... And paper, thanks for the warning.
Thank you so much for sharing ! I bet you were heartbroken . I would be. All the best
Wow that's terrible Liz. I hope the Manufacturers get it sorted and thankyou for bringing this to our attention.
Hi Jenny, I hope the website owners will move the membrane to a different section of their website 😃
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
To confirm, the heavyweight cornstarch membrane that I use is BIOdegradable, is lovely and can be purchased from mulchorganic.co.uk/collections/biodegradable-heavyweight-film. The problem membrane was labeled OXO-degradable.
We have put down something similar in the past. The leftover roll is still disintegrating away in the garden. We won't be using again either. You are not alone!
Thanks for that, will search for the corn starch one, such a good idea.
One year I re-used some clear Starbucks cups as winter-sowing containers, and I was a bit careless and left one of the lids in my yard into the summertime. I touched it to pick it up and it like shattered completely into a bunch of tiny plastic shards -- crazy how UV will absolutely destroy plastic, I think especially post-consumer recycled which tends to be weaker. You know maybe some day they'll have learned which plants bioaccumulate microplastics and we can grow them for remediation! Thank you for sharing, 🙏 I'm sure others have made the same mistake.
Oh no, how extremely frustrating for you and what a tedious job you've got in store 😞 Why does this product even exist? Who would want something that will decompose leaving plastic behind in 3 months? Hopefully you can rescue your plants and it won't be too bad. Take care 😊
Introduce mushrooms to your wood chips. The are a natural weed barrier they hold in moisture break down your organic matter and all of the properties that come from mushrooms. I've been doing it here in the Northwest and have been having amazing success. My plants seems very happy and healthy as well. Strapharia rugose annulata .
Hi Liz, wanted to thank you for the signed book, absolutely beautiful work ❤
Thanks really useful information. I use cardboard that I manage to get free from Facebook groups or shops, but I don’t have as much space to cover as you. I do have to pay for woodchips as I’ve been unable to find a tree surgeon to give me some. Some councils do give it away free but not mine. Compost is my biggest outlay, but it’s my first year and I should be producing plenty of my own for next year, neighbours and friends give me their compostable materials x
Oh Liz, I'm so sorry that this has happened. You are doing your very best to create your new garden and food forest, it will happen! It is happening! You have been mislead through no fault of your own. The company who are marketing this product as being environmentally friendly are so wrong.
Forgive me if I am wrong but I sense a feeling of loss, that you are missing the garden that you created and left behind. Moving on to pastures new must be overwhelming at times and challenging to say the least. You've got this Liz! You are making brilliant progress and this setback will get sorted. As for cardboard, I work in a hospital and skip fulls of it get taken away somewhere every day. Lovely brown cardboard. If there is a hospital nearby I would suggest contacting their estates department. Also your local plumbers, the boxes that bath tubs, boilers, all the stuff is packaged in huge brown boxes. We can only try and do our best, plastic is everywhere. My asthma get's worse every day that I go to work and inhale the disintegrating microplastic particles as I breath through the horrible, disposable face masks that we are told we have to wear. I can feel the fibres at the back of my throat as they disintegrate, it makes me cough and I wonder how much of this stuff is sitting in my lungs. I don't know if our soil is contaminated with plastic, that the plants will absorb it and be digested by our gut? Think I have been rambling enough.
I find my local shops have a ready supply of cardboard boxes. See if you can link up with a petshop. They tend to have a lot of used animal bedding. Ideal to make compost or even use as mulch. Biggest mistake? using a duvet to cover the ground to kill off weeds. The birds loved it, White stuffing everywhere.
Oh yes, the duvet thing - I've done that too in the dim and distant past. Seemed like such a good idea at the time, until the covering rotted!
Oh no! And covering such a large area! I inherited a load of that stuff, laid out and still in rolls over half mr plot! I instinctively didn’t like it and got rid of what I could but lots had already started to disintegrate, so sadly now it is too small to pick out….
Thanks so much for the warning and all your wonderful advice over the years.
Might or might not work? Could you use a leaf Sucker to suck off all the Oxo-degradable to prevent it entering your ground.
I too have fallen victim to marketing tricks! Greenwashing indeed. We've recently found a tree service locally who will dump the chips in the driveway, but we have to be super careful and triple check with them that they don't contain black walnut. So far so good- but isn't it amazing that plain old nature gives us what we need most of the time, no marketing gimmicks needed ;-) Love following your journey Liz
I'm sorry to hear that! -People (and companies) keep saying that plants don't absorb microplastics (and neither do we). If microplastics ends up in the sea, small fish will eat them and fill up their stomach, so there is no room for food, and thereby starve to death. But I can't help but wonder... can't this also happen to earthworms or other small earth-dwelling creatures?
I imagine that it might, eventually, also happen to large creatures (us)!
Greetings from the LooseNatural farm in Andalusia Spain where we currently live through a drought and we experience that mulch oxidises
Magnifique bravo 😊😊😊
À bientôt
Hey Liz just a thought, when I’m in need of wood chips I call around to the tree trimmers. They will dump wood chips the have run through the chipper for free most times. Cheers
They charge for them around here because so many people want them and are willing to pay for them.
Thank you for this information.. so sorry this happened to you :(
thanks for the heads up Liz. , My biggest mistake is in wanting to be organic, I did not add any nutrients to my garden except leaf compost. Nothing for over 10 years. It affected the growth and strength of my plants. It left them susceptible to insects and not much of a harvest. Now using blood and bone and fish fertilizer. and things are doing much better.
What I love about gardening, is that we get to learn from our mistakes and try again another year!
My go-to supplements are organic chicken poop pellets, straw, and ground up egg shells. It's what works in my garden for my crops. I also use bulk green waste compost from a good supplier so I know its been pre tested for nasties.
This is why I just quit using plastic in the garden altogether. It all breaks down and sheds micro-plastics eventually. I wish companies would be more transparent about what their products do, but then they wouldn't sell as much!
I just watched a BBC CZcams video about wax worms that feed on plastics by introducing oxygen molecules in their saliva which breaks the molecular bonds of the plastics, that, I think, could've solved your problem with the oxo degradable material had it been known back then 🤔😁🌱☀️
Hi Liz,have you tried sheep's wool to lay down to smother weeds
😮🤯 What a nightmare😭 I hope you are able to rid the property of this. 😞
Oh Liz, heartbreaking 💔. Greenwashing is happening so often to game our £££. Everyone go to supermarkets and ask them for cardboard as brown as possible and minimal printing or shine. Ask neighbours for Amazon cardboard etc.
People tend to take the money. I remember one of the biggest money donors to the heart foundation a few years back in Australia was the sugar industry. Probably still is.
Thank you!
Thanks Dolly!
Can you collect pine straw for your walkways instead? I have found that by cutting them, it allows them to breakdown more steadily. Works great. May save you money if you can resource them for free
Oh, how disappointing! Thank you for sharing the information. The only mistake of this sort I made was buying cheap bagged compost. It turned out to be composted agricultural leavings, that weren't composted enough to kill the seeds. I've never had to pick so many weeds in my life! I choose more carefully now, as there isn't enough space in my tiny front garden for making my own compost.
Last year I opened up some 'grow bags' and used the compost in the raised beds - hundreds of goat willow seedlings appeared. Like your experience, it obviously wasn't composted sufficiently to kill the weed seeds.
Similar happened to me...filled my yard with bindweed and blackberries. Fought them 30 years after.
I’ve used it before too and had the same experience... between plastic and tilling, I prefer tilling 😢
OXO degradable would suggest that it is eco friendly - very easy mistake to make. Thanks for the information.
Lisa,
I can’t imagine how you feel - the plastic cover in a wooden planter broke down with the sun,and I was in tears.
Quick question: is oxo-biodegradable mulch membrane from Mulch Organics? I have bought some sheet mulching from them.
All the best and thanks for your wonderful videos
Mulch Organic's heavyweight cornstarch roll is wonderful biodegradable membrane! It is not this horrid oxo-degradable stuff.
Wow.
Just a short note on the cardboard. I heard on TV (dont remember witch program) that the gleu they use for making cardboard is ful of "toxic" . I have not done any research on it , And I did use cadboard in my garden ........Sometimes I think that we have to acccept that with gardening comes a lot of weeding, like it or not. It is a contant battle against drought and weeds (and slogs and snails😵💫)
Yes, I always just use cardboard first then Woodchip on top.. sometimes it’s hard to trust manufacturers who like to label themselves as ‘eco friendly’. Even weed membrane I don’t touch too..
This is terrible what a disaster for you, who would expect that to happen. It would be interesting to hear what the company you bought it from has to say about it. Thanks for telling us about it.
Been there done that on a very large scale on our organic farm some years ago. hunted my rusty rarely used deep plough .buried the lot after tryiny to pick it up. Been about six years now. Have never seen any since. I have observed snails and slugs eat massive holes in heavy duty black polythene stack covers. Assume organisms in soil would have dealt with confetti like plastic i buried. Farming next to a river i could not risk it being blown into water.
Ugh! What a nightmare to have to remove all that. 😢
Hi Liz, dandelions (or any ‘weed’) tell you something about your soil. They have deep roots to break up compacted soil and they also indicate that your soil is low in calcium. A bit of research will show articles that talk about what various weeds indicate about soil and what action to take to make your soil less ‘friendly’ to them.
Could you please supply some of these articles? most of what I find is more pintest/facebook and not very scientific. Thanks Margaret
I don't really beleive this. Just doesn't seem to be what is happening. There are gardens near me filled with dandelions for years if this was true they would have hit a brick Wall and "fixed" the soil but I think it's more for the dandelions survival so it doesn't have to compete with most plants by going much further down for it's nutrients/water.
@@craigandheston-urbangarden1134 I have dandelions in clay, mulch, compost... I think they might just grow where the seeds land?
It looks like you have got black mountains view from your home. ❤
Black Mountain, maybe - Black Mountains (plural) are situated east of the Brecon Beacons and closer to Abergavenny etc. It's confusing.
@@InspirationSessions yes, exactly. You’re right, anyway, great view. I like your contents as I like growing vegetables as well 😄
Must have been heartbreaking to find out about the "oxo degradable material"
So sorry to hear it 😞