Help your veggie plants thrive, even through heat and drought, by using straw mulch correctly.
Mulching your vegetable garden with straw has a long list of benefits.
Straw is inexpensive, easy to work with, and good for your soil.
Credit: Marty Baldwin
A layer of straw mulchbetween your veggie rowssets off your plants and makes your garden look neat and tidy.
Here’s what you oughta know about using straw mulch around your edible plants.
What Is Straw?
Credit: Cameron Sadeghpour
Straw is the dried stems left after wheat or oats (or other grains) have been harvested.
Once the grain is removed, the dried stalks are bundled into bales.
Ideally, there will be very few seeds or weeds in the straw bale.
Also known aspine needle mulch, pine straw is not straw but baled pine needles.
It is best used for mulching ornamental beds.
Benefits of Mulching with Straw
Straw mulch suppresses weed growth.
Straw also moderates fluctuations in soil temperature and moisture.
Because straw reduces evaporation from the soil surface, you won’t need to water as often.
Keeping the soil more evenly moist has many benefits.
A good layer of straw mulch helps prevent diseases that are frequently spread by splashing rain.
Developing melons, pumpkins, and squash stay cleaner when resting on a straw mulch bed.
It’s great for strawberries as well.
“Justwatch for slugs,” she adds.
How to Select Straw
Always use clean straw, not hay.
If used as mulch, these seeds germinate and create a weed problem.
A good quality straw contains few seeds.
