When laying your rubber mulch, whether you’re adding to a commercial park or your at home play garden, it can be surprisingly easy to make some major mulching mistakes, you can read more on how to lay your rubber here – or continue reading below to find out the 5 most common rubber mulch mistakes.
1. Don’t let yourself get wood chips and rubber mulch confused. You may be inclined to think that wood chips will work just as well as rubber mulch? Well think again. While wood chips decay quickly, they decay too quickly — and you’ll have to replace it so much more often than rubber mulch.
2. Although rubber mulch smothers weeds, it won’t be as effective as it could be if you don’t pull out your weeds before laying the mulch. Ironically, it’s quite likely to cause more harm to your plants if you neglect weeding in the beginning as they will be harder to control and remove when under a bed of rubber mulch. It’s important to eradicate all weeds, spores, and fungi prior to mulching to really make sure that your garden soil is weed-free and stays that way.
3. As a company, you may be surprised to hear that we don’t want you to buy too much rubber mulch from us. However it’s true, too much mulching is a big no-no. The appropriate amount to use is between two and three inches, you can use our Coverage Calculator to find out exactly how much you’ll need. Any more than the recommended can stress your plants, especially in the harsher weathers. Too thick a layer of mulch could also prevent water and fertiliser from getting through to the plants roots and soil which, of course, need them the most.
4. Laying your rubber mulch in the wrong places, can wreak havoc on your garden. Avoid putting the mulch right next to stems or trunks. Space has to be allowed around the bases of plants to ensure that they can breath properly without hindrances. When mulching trees most people have a tendency to pile the rubber mulch up around the base of the tree, this is also known as volcano mulching because the tree trunk sticks up out of a mound of rubber mulch. However doing this can trap moisture against the tree bark, enabling bacterial and fungal diseases and even the death of the tree. The rubber mulch should be lay around the tree base in a circle resembling the shape of a doughnut, leaving plenty space for breathing.
5. Do you know where your mulch comes from? You should. Some rubber mulch in the UK can still contain toxins and coloured paints that run in to your soil when wet. Here at Safety Play we guarantee a 100% toxin free product and use non run polyurethane colouring.
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