Mulching for moisture

We are counting on straw this year as the answer to maintaining moisture and suppressing weeds.

This morning I hopped out of bed at 4:30, highly motivated to cover our newly seeded beet, carrot, Hakurei turnip, pea, and arugula garden beds with a thick layer of straw. It was such a beautiful morning! Cool and surprisingly damp, with a half moon still in the eastern sky and a low hovering mist.

As part of regenerative farming, we have been working toward no-till gardening as a way to continue to improve the health of our soil and therefore the nutrition of the food we produce. With time this seems to be paying off with very notable differences in the tilth of our soil. With many of our beds, it has felt like planting in whipping cream this year, the soil is so airy and light. We are also experimenting with straw mulch on our garden beds to conserve the moisture in the soil. As we prepare for a potential drought in the West, retaining as much moisture as possible becomes a critical aspect of growing food.

You can see from the photo that the drip hose and dew had left the beds with good moisture, so my task this morning was to hold that moisture by scattering straw over the beds. This straw should keep the beds moist in these coming weeks as the newly planted seeds begin to germinate.

Later in the day as a volunteer and I were transplanting eggplant into beds that had been pre-mulched with straw, I was thrilled by the perfection of tilth and soil moisture that awaited under the straw for these transplants, especially after yesterday’s 85 degree heat.