In order to keep water from evaporating from the soil, farmers often cover the ground around their crop plants with sheets of polyethylene plastic. There could soon be a more eco-friendly alternative, ...

Mulching is one of the most basic and essential tasks of gardening. Most of us mulch because it helps reduce the amount of time we spend pulling weeds. Mulch provides many other benefits, however. It ...

Many years ago early in my agriculture/gardening career, I discovered a book written by a woman who developed a novel way of gardening. Ruth Stout’s gardening technique involved applying layers of ...

Spring planting in mulch helps control weeds, including reducing the need to weed as much. Few weeds will come up through a 4-inch layer of hay. In spring we plant several crops into hay mulch to help ...

Walter Battle shows how to lay sheet mulch, and Cathy Faust shows how to make strawberry jam. This week on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South, UT Extension Area Specialist Walter Battle ...

Mulch is a material used to reduce water loss from soil. Lately, it has not been unusual to question whether mulch is useful on dry soil. That may be an issue in the short term if the mulch is ...