How to Kill Your Plants

If you’ve painstakingly taken the time to choose plants that look beautiful and adapt well to our Florida climate, do the arduous physical labor of getting them into the ground and growing, and give them all the water and nutrients they need to thrive, the last thing you want to do is watch those plants wither and die before your very eyes.

One simple way to prevent that from happening is mulch. At Gaston Mulch & Soil, we know mulch about mulch and could sing its praises all day long. But for the sake of this article, we’ll focus specifically on how it keeps your plants from kicking the (flower) bucket.

Do This to Destroy Your Plants

Ignore Heat and Cold

One of the fastest ways to say sayonara to your plants is to leave them unprotected from extreme temperatures. Unregulated root temperatures interrupt photosynthesis (a plant’s basic process of creating sugar), disrupt the pollination process, cause water loss and dehydration — and eventually kill the plant.

Expose Them to the Wind

Another easy way to off your plants is to leave them exposed to harsh winds. Strong winds rip off leaves and flowers, damage and break branches, and can even uproot your shrubs and trees, making them more vulnerable to further damage from disease or insect infestation. If the wind is continual, it can even zap moisture from the plant’s foliage faster than the roots can extract it from the soil, leading to wilted and browned leaves.

Starve Them

If your plants don’t get the nutrients they need through proper moisture and food, they will not be long for this world. Water is necessary for photosynthesis to use the sun’s energy to create the plant’s own food and provide cell structural support that allows the plant to move or bend without breaking. Insufficient moisture leads to browning and leaf curling, as well as, you guessed it, death.

How to Not Kill Your Plants

If all of that sounded terrible and not something you want to do to your landscape, look no further than mulch. Mulch has countless benefits for the health and vitality of your plants, including the following.

Regulate Their Temperature

Mulch helps protect your plant roots from fluctuating, extreme temperature changes, acting as an insulator and soil temperature regulator, keeping the plant roots cool in the summer months and warm in the winter months. Balanced soil temperature leads to more fertile soil, which is especially important for younger plants that need the healthiest soil possible to flourish.

Protect Them From the Wind

Strong wind gusts can blow away the soil and even uproot the plant entirely. An effective mulch layer of around 2-4 inches helps protect the soil and plant roots from erosion, allowing the roots to anchor themselves more effectively against the wind. In addition, mulch over the soil prevents compaction when soil particles are pushed together, leaving little pore space between them.

Feed Them Well

Ensuring that your plants receive all the water and nutrients they need help them grow properly. Soil health has much to do with this, as it prevents water and vitamin loss and aids in nutrient retention. Even better, as the organic mulch breaks down, it adds nutrients back into the soil, making an even healthier environment for your plants can grow.

Save Your Plants With Mulch

The benefits listed here are just a small sample of what mulch can do for your plants. Other advantages of proper mulching include the following.

Weed prevention
Increased biological activity and micro-organism eco-health
Improved landscape appearance
Repelled pests such as ticks, fleas, and gnats

Gaston Mulch & Soil Stops Plant Killings

Protecting your plants and helping them grow can be easier than you realize. With the proper mulch selection, application, and maintenance, your plants can blossom.

At Gaston, we’re dead serious about sharing our expert advice on the best mulch and soil for your landscape, and we use mulch generated from Gaston’s Tree Debris Recycling for a more sustainable process. You can use our handy mulch calculator to estimate how much mulch you’ll need for your project and if you choose to pick it up, we’ll gladly help you load it into your vehicle for free.