The Grounds Department imported Florida Pine Straw to use around campus in the landscape beds. Small scale experiments have been in place to evaluate mulch around campus, the past three years. Some of the products used were cherry pits, rubber mulch, ground pallet mulch, hardwood mulch, conifer mulch and pine straw. Pine straw proved to be the winner for several reasons. The pine straw comes from harvesting the fallen needles of the longleaf and slash pine. No trees were harmed in the making of this mulch! Other mulches are best delivered in the spring and frost laws can delay delivery. Pine straw is best harvested in the fall and can be delivered then stored very easily. Pine straw is a natural landscaping mulch (garden mulch) that is attractive, decomposes slowly, resists compaction, and is easy to work with.
Pine straw also has other great benefits to your landscape besides just adding beauty. Pine straw also known as pine needles help provide excellent growing conditions for healthy trees, plants and shrubs. Pine Straw is long lasting, doesn’t float or wash away and prevents soil erosion unlike other mulches and helps fight against erosion. When pine needles start to decompose they produce nitrogen and it acts as a fertilizer to your plants, trees and shrubs!
Pine straw mulch looks great on the campus.
Great work!
Hope to see more on the campus!
David
Thanks guys, the pine straw looks great. How often do you apply the mulch to the garden?
The pine straw held tight this year and will not need a second application until 2013. I still ordered a truckload for 2012 to mulch the beds missed in 2011.
We live in a Longleaf pine neighborhood (was a forest) here in S. Carolina (Albion grad in 1973). Everything Samantha said is true. At the County (& State) level, we encourage the use of mulch for quick ground cover when new site work or landscaping exposes the dirt to the elements. Longleaf straw seems some of the best and we (luckily) have several of these trees that keep on giving us a way to reduce our grass to mow, slow erosion in the Sandhills, and increase easy beds to care for. I hope the campus finds the same success.
In our experience
Pine bark pellets look nice but put down too many and they will starve your plants of water and nutrients maybe through compaction. They float around in the rain too. Sadly I have experienced both problems (in a school campus context).
Hardwood mulch, same compaction issue, if too fine they turn to mush/sludge, if too thick look bad and splinters risk. Tree lop companies tend to give lower quality away free. Difficult to source the good quality hardwood stuff.
I think the Southwestern USA practice of using pine needles needs serious consideration – the advantages are several as you state in this article and hard to ignore. Thank you.
(I am not from USA, from Australia).