NiteLites, headquartered in Franklin, Ohio, offers tips and cautions landscape contractors should heed to ensure mulch performs to its maxiumum capabilities and avoids mishaps:
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Not only does mulch enhance the beauty of a home and landscape, but it also provides many other valuable benefits for shrubs and trees.
Mulching around plants, shrubs, trees, and landscape focal points such as sculptures and seating areas, is a great way to reduce landscape maintenance and to keep plants healthy. Live plantings benefit from mulch as it conserves moisture by providing as much as a 25 percent reduction in soil moisture loss from evaporation. Mulch also keeps soil aerated by reducing soil compaction that often results from raindrops hitting the soil. Mulch also works to reduces water runoff along with the accompanying soil erosion.
But if it's not handled correctly, mulch can cause serious problems. Too much mulch can lead to retention of too much moisture which can lead to root rot. Too much mulch can also create a haven for insects and tree or shrub disease. Mulch should be applied and spread so that the result is a total of a 2- to 4-inch layer. Mulch piled too high against the trunk of a tree can be detrimental too. The tree trunk and the root crowns should be exposed, and the mulch extended to the edges of the branches where the tree roots search out water and nutrients.
One more caution on the use of mulch – mulch should never cover the landscape lighting fixtures or their heat vents. All lights, indoor or outdoor, produce heat. An outdoor light that is covered in mulch has no means for the heat to escape. If the heat cannot escape the mulch may start to smolder from the extreme temperature build-up. In doing so, the heat can melt the PVC composite of the light, burn the insulation off the cable and eventually short out the lighting system. In essence, the lighting system will require several new lights, new cable and a repair bill that could have easily been avoided.
Be sure to ask if there is a landscape lighting system on the property.
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