I grow my tomatoes in the same beds every year so when I was planting them before a week of wet weather, I knew I needed to find something to mulch with and find it quickly. Soil borne diseases are the problem when you can’t rotate. Mulching, to prevent the soil from splashing on the leaves, is a good way to minimize their impact.
Salt marsh hay is the preferred mulch here in New England but almost impossible to find. Mainely Mulch (you can google it) is what my Agway offered as an alternative so I bought a bale of it. I applied it just as the rain was coming in, which was probably a good thing. It’s chopped quite finely and on a dry and windy day, I think it might blow around a lot. Also, dust, for those of us with tendencies toward asthma might be an issue, too. The biggest problem, however, is that about three weeks later, it’s full of a particular kind of weed. Whatever it is does dig down in the soil and breaks off when you pull it. No way to get the root without seriously disturbing the mulch and that would defeat the purpose. While it would be difficult to say for sure where these weeds came from, since they are not growing in the areas of the bed that aren’t mulched, circumstantial evidence would say they were imported in it.
