Keeping Your Texas Garden Moist
The heat of a Texas summer can dry your yard right up. Finding the right landscaping products to keep your soil moist is essential to preventing foundation issues, as well as growing a lush lawn and garden. Clay, sand, or loam soil mixtures are scattered throughout the North Texas area. Clay soil, which is very common in the North Texas area, is a lot like a sponge– behaving differently when it’s dry vs. when it’s wet. Clay soil will shrink and swell depending on the moisture level, and that movement can cause stress on the structural elements of a building, resulting in unlevel floors, separations, drywall and masonry cracking and misalignment of doors and windows.
Two products that are helpful to integrate into your yard management plan are mulch and compost. Both have moisture retaining properties along with many other benefits for maintaining a healthy yard.
MULCH
The word ‘mulch’ is most commonly used to refer to shredded wood or bark products, but mulch can actually be anything that serves as top dressing for soil. Mulch is extremely helpful in a yard or garden; A 2- to 4-inch layer of mulch will conserve soil moisture, stabilize soil temperatures, reduce soil erosion, reduce soil compaction and prevent weed growth.
Most importantly, a layer of mulch protects your soil from the drying effects of the sun and wind while preventing rapid evaporation from the soil surface. Water will also soaks into mulch instead of running off, as it often does on uncovered soil, further helping to retain moisture.
COMPOST
Compost is the result of decayed organic matter such as yard trimmings or kitchen scraps and provides nutrients to the soil. It addition to retaining moisture in the soil, it also adds beneficial microbes, and attracts worms. When compost is mixed into the soil, it can even provide nutrients to the plants to reduce the need for commercial fertilize. If in the future you do fertilize, the water retaining properties of the compost will ensure the fertilizer is absorbed into the soil and doesn’t get carried off when it rains.
Earth Haulers has a great selection of mulch and organic compost on our products page.
