How To Get Free Garden Mulch

Anyone who has ever mulched a garden knows how valuable it can be to a garden. In colder climates, it protects plants over the Winter. In the Summer, it helps the soil retain water. As the mulch degrades, it provides valuable nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

But anyone who has ever mulched also knows it can be expensive, especially if you have a lot of gardens around the house. Or even if you have a few larger gardens.

Here is a great way to save money.

The municipality I live in collects green waste (garden waste). Plant clippings, grass clippings, leaves, etc. And you can also put branches out by the road. Once every 2 weeks, they collect the green garden waste and a wood chipper pulled by a big truck comes by. The branches are put into the wood chipped and hauled away.

I was curious what happened to all of this and did some checking around. It turned out that our county has a Community Reclamation Center. It is a place where people can drop off their recyclables. And it is a ways away from the landfill (thank God, lol). But further back in the reclamation center, there are a couple of free garden goodies.

All of the green garden waste is turned into compost. All experienced gardeners know that compost is a fantastic soil amendment (a great way to improve soil if it is sandy, porous, etc.). Compost can also be used as a mulch. The reclamation center had a huge pile of compost, so I visited several times to bag my own. One warning: Compost is extremely heavy.

And they also had a gigantic pile of wood chippings (all the branches that are chipped and collected and hauled away). The pile when I first visited was about 20 feet high, and about 40 feet wide!! Just huge. And the wood was chipped into much smaller pieces then I imagined. So I bagged up a lot of that too.

Last year, I spent $65+ on mulch, and this year, I spent about $5 (the estimated cost of my gas and the plastic bags). So essentially the mulch this year was free. I just had to spend a little money for supplies and getting there. And the great thing this year-I didn't feel like I had to skimp on mulch to save money.

You will need to check with your county or municipality to see if this is available in your area.