This past weekend we had a team of volunteers come out and place mulch mats around our trees.
The mulch mats will smother the weeds and grass around the trees, significantly reducing competition for moisture and nutrition in the soil. They also retain moisture and help warm the soil earlier in the spring. They will disintegrate in 3 or 4 years and by that time the trees should be well above the surrounding grasses and be better able to fend for themselves.
The work itself wasn’t all that hard, but there were a lot of trees and a lot of mats. As the saying goes, “many hands make light the work.”
I was impressed with the turn out. In addition to some of our staff, we had some of the local naturalist/ecologists community, along with my nephew’s rock & roll band. He wanted to use some unfinished office space in our building as a recording studio that night, and he loved the idea of trading labor for space.
Two Ecopax Volunteers place a mulch mat
Tree mulching crew poses for photo
Many thanks to the volunteers.
