DISCLAIMER: Thank you for listening to the Eco Mama podcast. Please note that this podcast's information is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is based on personal experiences and opinions. We are not licensed healthcare providers; the content should not be considered professional medical advice.
We encourage you to consult a healthcare provider before changing your diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle. The information shared on this podcast is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Furthermore, any views or opinions expressed on this podcast are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. The content is intended to be informative and enjoyable.
By listening to this podcast, you agree that the hosts, guests, or anyone associated with the Eco Mama podcast will not be held liable for any loss, damage, or injury caused or alleged to be caused by the information or opinions shared on this podcast.
Thank you for your understanding, and we look forward to continuing to share our journey toward a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle with you.
DISCLAIMER: Thank you for listening to the Eco Mama podcast. Please note that this podcast's information is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is based on personal experiences and opinions. We are not licensed healthcare providers; the content should not be considered professional medical advice.
We encourage you to consult a healthcare provider before changing your diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle. The information shared on this podcast is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Furthermore, any views or opinions expressed on this podcast are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. The content is intended to be informative and enjoyable.
By listening to this podcast, you agree that the hosts, guests, or anyone associated with the Eco Mama podcast will not be held liable for any loss, damage, or injury caused or alleged to be caused by the information or opinions shared on this podcast.
Thank you for your understanding, and we look forward to continuing to share our journey toward a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle with you.
Did you know that your skin is the largest organ on your body? And that whatever you put on it, Hits your bloodstream faster than if you were to eat something. When was the last time you read the ingredients on your personal care products or those cleaning products you use in your home every week?
Jaime:
12 years ago, I embarked on a journey to seek home and personal care products made with only the safest ingredients while learning which ingredients were harmful and should be avoided in that time, I've cultivated a lifestyle where I confidently know what is in our products. The ECO Mama Podcast is for mamas who want to create the safest environment in their home for their family, and belief prevention is the ultimate solution for attaining optimal
health.
Jaime:
Join me as I continue this journey and share stories of lessons learned while having an occasional conversation with other mamas.
My name is Jaime Snell, and I will be your ECO mama guide.
Jaime:
Welcome back to the ECO Mama podcast. I'm your host, Jaime Snell, and I'm super excited that you're joining me today. I wanna talk a little bit about gardening and in particular, now that spring is upon us, I wanna talk about the mulch that we use in our gardens. Mulch is a great, great tool that we can use to help preserve the soil, to keep it moist, to protect the roots of our plants and to make our yards look pretty. But sometimes we go for vanity over security and we pick the prettiest mulch out there. There's a downside to doing that because you might be gravitating towards some of that bright shiny red mulch. Those colors are dyed. My friends, and I'm so sorry to be the one to inform you of this, I have not seen any natural mulches that are red. At least not in the southeast of the United. And the problems with these is that they are adding chemicals to this mulch and it is affecting the natural flora in your yard and creating some havoc within your root system and putting pesticides, cuz yes, they are treated with pesticides too and other chemicals. On your lawns and it's just not good. Especially if you are doing a vegetable garden. Vegetable gardens need as much organic material as possible. Think compost, grass clippings, undid mulch, natural wood shavings, you can even go with dried leaves, things of that nature. So I think mulch is important. It can be still beautify, even though if it's not a dyed color. But in addition to that, I want to share with you the different kinds of mulches that you can be choosing from. The two big types are organic mulch and inorganic mulch. So the organic mulch is like your wood mulch chips and bark shredded leaves, as I had mentioned. This is something that you can run over your lawnmower with. If you get one of those bags or you. You know, build them up in a pile throughout the fall in your backyard, and then use them in your garden. Or in your planter areas to protect the soil and the roots of your plants. Grass clippings, like I mentioned, straw mulch is another one, and pine needles. So these are all examples of organic mulch that is safer your yard, safer, your pets to run around in safer the water to flow and drain back into the sewer systems. It's always to beautify and secure your yard and the plantings within it without sacrificing the environment or the health of you or your loved ones. Some of the examples of the inorganic mulches that I highly encourage not to be consumed or purchased or supported, or much less put in your yard. I would say the number one is the plastic mulch. Plastic mulch has been made. It's more for commercial uses, but they're basically making this one purpose. Mulch out of plastic that will never really be able to use anywhere else for anything else. They're literally, and it's not even recycled plastic. If they're creating plastic to put in your yard, does it do the job well, kinda. But the chemicals from the plastic leach down into the soil contaminating the soil, so it does protect in the soil creating a a layer, so to speak. It creates that protective. On the top of the soil and it keeps the the beating sun or the, the very cold, cold from changing the temperature of the soil. However, like I said, those chemicals leech down into the soil, contaminating it. So, and then, There's wash away with heavy rains. And then what happens when you're done? Is it just buried down into the earth as gravity takes hold? Do you clear it out and take it to the dump? I mean, it's just not a natural thing that's gonna break down into your garden, so I just highly encourage to stay away from that. Another item that is considered organic would be gravel and rocks. Now, a lot of the gravel and rocks that you find, they're actually manmade concrete that's chipped down into small pieces. And the reason that you don't wanna use these is because they will not decompose. Another benefit of using organic mulch is that it adds nutrients to your garden and to your soil and to your yard. So if you put something in there that's not gonna decompose, it's just gonna sit there and. Add any additional benefit to the garden. No nutrients, nothing that will enhance your plants or your garden. Or your flowers for that matter if you like to do a butterfly garden every year. Another one that I suggest that we avoid is rubber mulch. This is most commonly seen in my experience at playgrounds now. When I first came across it, I'm like, oh, that's ingenious, because when the kids fall off, The slide or the swing or the monkey bars, they bounce right back. Right. Well, there's some benefits to that. I can see it. And I think that that is a good repurposing of rubber that we can't do anything else with. So I'm not completely opposed to it now. I highly discourage anyone from using it. In their personal lawn care, number one, it stinks. It smells really, really bad. It's treated so you're adding chemicals to your yard. Number two, it attracts cockroaches. Cockroaches just love it. I cannot explain why, but they do. So. I just wouldn't wanna put it out there just for that sake alone, having like more bugs and stuff in there. And the third is, it also does not decompose. It just sits there. It doesn't add any benefit. If anything, like I mentioned, the chemicals, they'll leach right back down into the garden. All right, so I shared with you a little bit about the differences of the two main mulches, organic and inorganic. And then I also shared. Why we should use mulch in our yard, especially in the springtime when the weather starts to change, the moisture retention, the temperature controlling. One thing I didn't mention, and I think this is probably why my parents used it, it does great weed control. I don't like to use any chemicals in my yard. I did a podcast in the fall with my husband, and I'll reference it down in the notes below in the show notes. And we talked about lawn care, lawn treatment, and side note on that, if you've listened to that episode, we are now using Sunday, and we're not far enough long into the use of it yet for me to report on it, but I'm excited because. They don't use the pesticides and the chemicals that a lot of the lawn care services use. And it's kind of a do-it-yourselfer so we know what we're putting on our graph. And I can trust what's going on there. But with the weed suppression from mulch, it's great because I don't want to spray any weed killer in my gardens or in my side beds or where my flowers are, or my vegetables are not even where my roses are. I just don't want'em. I don't want any chemicals in my yard if I can avoid it, and I do my best to do that, the only way it's really gonna get in is when the neighbors to the right of me and the neighbors to the left of me put it on their yards. And the wind blows it into mine that I have no control over, but I can control what I put in my own grass. So another benefit is it helps maintain your soil health and prevent erosion. And then of course, the thing I mentioned about making it look pretty, that's considered the aesthetic appeal. There's another benefit to using mulch, especially organic mulch because there's a cost effectiveness to. It can be a little bit more expensive than your traditional mulches that are treated or even dyed, you know, upfront. But it lasts longer. And like I mentioned, it adds nutrients back to your soil so you don't have to use other products. You don't have to spend money on other soil enhancements to get that. So you kind of, you save money in the long run, if you think about it that way. Making the switch from traditional to organic mulches. I don't know. It's kind of a no-brainer since I started owning my own home, which, Hmm, we're going on nine years now that I've been buying mulch. I think that's right. Maybe it's eight years that I've been a mulch buyer. I've always saw it, the organic, the untreated, the non-treated. I did look once into the red because I saw it in someone's yard and I was like, oh, that's so pretty. I want that. You know, the researcher and me dug into it and saw that it was artificially colored, and those colors can wreak havoc in nature because they're not meant for it. Just like our bodies, our bodies weren't meant to digest our artificial colors, and neither is the earth. So I opted out and we have plain all brown here, but I can still beautify it with flowers. I have lots of seeds for flowers. We've got some germinating right now and I can't wait to put them in the ground. We have a beautiful butterfly garden out back, and I'm putting some more perennials in there this spring. I'm very excited for it. So we've already done one delivery of mulch in our yard. If you wanna see some fun pictures from that, you can check out POD or this is the podcast, sorry. You can check out the blog that I've done on mulching and that just a great opportunity to dig a little bit deeper and it goes, gives you more than what the show notes will have on all the research that I did for this for you. But make a positive impact on the environment and don't make it worse. I highly encourage you to go for the organic mulch. Now, I. Pull up five cuz you know me, I'm all about USA made brands, so I pulled up five USA made brands that I recommend. Now I, I'll be honest, I have not bought these brands directly. I have just gone to my local mulch supplier and it's almost like a big stockyard and they take a forklift and scoop up the mulch and they drop it in my neighbor's truck because I have an awesome neighbor who will let us use his truck to bring the mulch back. We have purchased. Riverbed rocks from them before, so they do delivery as well, but we never, we really don't use that much mulch that we need it delivered every year. So we go and pick it up. Now, if I were to need to go to a hardware store just for a bag or two, something that is like pre-measured for me thankfully I, I have the option not to do that because then that's just more plastic we have to throw away. But if you have to go that route, cause you do need mulch for your yard and you wanna do something to beautify it and to protect your soil and enhance your. These are five brands that I have found that are made in the new USA and I have very high ratings, so I highly suggest one of these if you're gonna hit yourself into Lowe's or Home Depot or ACE Hardware. Big proponent of Ace Hardware here. It's still small business feel when I go into it, and almost everyone who works at Ace Hardware knows what they're talking about as opposed to the other two big brand store. Okay, ECOS scraps. So Ecos scraps produces mulch from food waste. And side note, did you know that there are companies now that will compost for you? You put your food in a bag, your food scraps that are safe or composting, and instead of having one in your backyard, they pick up that bag every week and drop off fresh compost to. And it's like a community compost service, which is really, really cool. I still have one in my backyard where seem to be managing it. Okay. But I would've loved that when my kids were younger because I would've had the opportunity to still have mulch for my or not mulch for my garden. Well, yes, mulch, because compost can be mulch, but I would have composting for my garden that could help enrich my. And be able to not just toss that food in the garbage. So if you're interested in that, I suggest you Google it for your neighborhood. But ECO scraps takes food waste and creates mulch, and they reduce waste in the landfills by doing so, and they have that valuable nutrient. Its back into your soil Harvest Garden Pro may say that again. Harvest Garden Pro is a company that produces mulch, shrimp, bark, and wood chip. Also, as I mentioned, it's great for retaining moisture and suppressing weeds. These two, as well as the next three that I'm gonna mention are organic brands. These are organic mulches, soil pep. It's a company that produces mulch, made from a blend of composted leaves, grass and wood chips. It gives that nutrient rich. Great. That's great for improving your soil health. Black gold. Now this is the stuff my neighbor uses and I'm always blessed when she brings me a little bit of it, if it's leftover from her gardening. She has two houses. She lives next door and then she's got a house in the city. And just a small, little What would you call it? Like keep cod style home. But she still main maintains her garden over there, even though she spends most of her time here and she gets the black gold organic for over there. Cause it's such a small area, it's kind of a higher end mulch. And she brings me some and it's just this beautiful enriched, it's almost like a soiled mulch, but it's, it's, it's composted bark is what it is with wood chips and other organic materials. And it brings this great balance back to the garden. Finally, the last supplier that I would suggest that I've read with high ratings. Black gold is the only one that I've tried, but Gardener's supply company, it's another one that I found that's made in the usa and they produce their mulch made from a blend of coconut per light and worm castings. Now worm cast. Or another forum of composting. And, and I will eventually get into composting one day to share some of the tips and tricks that I've learned about it. But basically there's like two main things of com of composting. You have your food scraps from your kitchen, then there's warm composting. So the, the two differences are both valuable and rich. But basically you have live worms that help break down that food for you. Speeds up the process. So Gardener Supply Company uses worms in their mulching process. And again, there's this great, that product is great for retaining the moisture and improving soil. So yeah, there you have it. Long winded explanation of mulching, why you need to switch to organic mulch if you haven't already made that switch. Check out the show notes below. If you wanna reference back to the episode of why I don't use pesticides in our yard. And feel free to leave a message. We would love to hear from you and share with us any of your tips and tricks on organic gardening, because I wanna talk more about that. And I would love to share new things that I can learn from you as well as things that I've already learned on my own. So I hope you guys have a fabulous. I hope you have a fabulous day, and I'm so grateful you were able to join me today. Thank you so much. Take care.
