One simple way to give your yard a more finished or professional look is to mulch around your trees.
In addition to improving the aesthetics, there are some horticultural benefits as well. Mulch helps to reduce evaporation and suppresses weed growth. Having a wide circle of mulch around a tree base also helps to keep the lawn mower a safer distance away. Ramming the trunk with a mower can cause damage to the bark. Also, no need to weed whip near a trunk — think trunk safety!
A tree trunk is one of the most important parts of the tree. Can a tree live without its trunk? All the water and nutrients flow up and down the trunk. Destroying the bark interrupts this flow and can cause damage over time.
So, what are the steps to mulching around a tree? First, prune off any sucker growth at the base of the tree. Prune up lower limbs. If your river birch looks more like a shrub than a tree — you have some work to do. If the main tree ever dies, and all you have is sucker growth, remove or continue to cut back. The rootstock — sucker growth will never be by itself, the tree you had. Sucker growth usually subsides as the tree ages.
When trees are younger, they need more care, then most grow out of it … just like kids! After pruning — on to the edging. I hate plastic edging … it never stays in place. Here is the best way to create a neat, clean edge: using a sharp flat spade, dig a V trench around the tree in a circle. The V should be 6 inches deep and 6 inches across the top.
The circle you are creating around the trunk should be at least 24 inches from the trunk of a small tree, up to several feet away from the trunk of mature trees. Personally, I would spray the inside area of the circle to kill any vegetation. You could use in addition or instead, several layers of newspaper or cardboard to help smother weeds or turf. Place a 4-6-inch layer of mulch material inside the circle over the top of your paper. I prefer to use shredded bark. Easiest material to freshen up each season.
Fill the V trench with bark, but keep it a little lower than the turf level. You want to have your mower go easily over the top, without throwing bark all over. Do not pile any type of mulch up against the trunk. The base of the trunk needs to stay dry. Also, mulch against the trunk offers shelter for insects and rodents to be hiding and munching, causing damage you don’t see. Sneaky.
If soil is mounded around the trunk, or the trunk area is raised, do not dig it out. Just make sure your circle is wide enough that the outer area of your circle is flat, level with the surrounding turf. If your circle is sloped all the way around, heavy rain can wash bark into your turf area. Not fun when you have to mow. Just dumping bags of mulch around your trees without creating an area properly, will only result in a mess.
Every year, or perhaps every other year, stand inside your bark circle and rake the bark back from your V trench towards the trunk. Re-cut the trench to re-fresh your lines, then rake the mulch back in place. The 6-inch depth and width is critical as most weeds with a creeping type root system will not succeed in crossing a bark trench of that size. This V trench is perfect for edging anywhere in the yard. If this seems like a lot of work … at least do the trees your neighbors can see!
There are other ways to create edges with hard materials like landscape blocks. Problem is, over time they heave up or sink down and need re-setting — a job most of us won’t or can’t do on our own. Running a flat spade? Most of us can get behind that … literally!
Rock looks great the first year or so. Eventually though, enough soil blows or erodes into the rock and you have weed growth. Using rock as mulch can also smother tree roots due to its weight.
Speaking of trees, this is a great time of year to plant them. You will only have about two months to monitor their watering before winter sets in. Reminder to always dig the hole twice the size as the container the tree is in. This way there will be softer soil for the roots to grow into, especially if you have soil high in clay.