Cutting back and Mulching? Why bother?

Either way, here's the pitch:

With all the rain, the garden has had a wild summer, and cutting back helps clean up the "party" mess - spent flowers, overgrown stems, and floppy plants. It’s like getting the garden to stop wearing its 80s mullet and settle for something a bit more… manageable. Cutting back perennials and other plants that have died back helps remove dead or diseased foliage, reducing the risk of pests and diseases overwintering and spreading in the spring. It also encourages healthier growth next year by clearing out old material, giving plants more room to grow. Trimming back gives your plants a fresh start for next year, much like a plant's New Year’s resolution: "This year, I will grow stronger and taller… and maybe finally bloom on time." Once this is done it's time to get mulching!

Mulching, strictly speaking, means adding a protective layer over the soil for Winter, it doesn't refer to any particular substance, you can add whatever you have to hand. This could be what you might expect such as organic materials like manure and compost (*according to purists compost and mulch are very different - compost can be mulch but mulch can not be compost, I will leave you to ponder that) right through wood chippings and newspaper, and even inorganic material such as plastic sheeting, gravel and rocks. However, whilst this might technically be true, in Olli's world, I think this is stupid. It's a bit like saying golf is a sport. This definition doesn't serve my purpose, so I am unilaterally declaring mulch to be exclusively organic material.

The benefits of 'Olli style' mulching are many and diverse, some obvious and some surprising. 

Mulching organic material onto your beds improves soil structure and fertility. As it breaks down over the winter, it enriches the soil by becoming a nutrient rich compost (*see above), It's like a slow-cooking buffet for your plants and come spring, they'll thank you by growing strong and healthy, like they’ve had Jamie Oliver and Joe Wicks on speed dial over lockdown. You will also notice that this creates an ideal environment for earthworms and beneficial microbes so much so that your current moon dust, which is now apparently dead as a donut, will miraculously quickly be brimming with life, busy aerating and improving drainage. A good layer of mulch helps suppress weeds by blocking sunlight, preventing them from germinating. This saves time, effort, backache and endless boredom in Spring, when weeds are more likely to ruin your Sunday afternoons. It isn't a totally outrageous claim to state that 'mulching gets your garden to do your gardening for you'.

Mulching allows you to control the weather. No not really, however it does allow you to protect your garden from the worst stresses and strains of our cruel Winter mistress. As mulch settles down it creates a protective crust above your soil world. The benefits of this are not unlike the Earth's upper atmosphere and Bruce Willis, protecting us from lethal solar radiation, asteroids and freezing to death in an instant. The 'Willis layer' as we shall call this crust, forms a barrier that stops water evaporating, maintaining soil moisture levels, which is especially useful during dry spells in Autumn (as if) and also when Winter winds dry out exposed soil. One of the biggest problems facing humanity is not pronouns (although that/this/they is/are obviously very important) but soil erosion and depletion. Without soil we can't grow anything and everything and everyone dies. During heavy Autumn and Winter rains, bare soil is completely vulnerable to erosion. Mulching stops this by holding the soil in place, reducing runoff and nutrient loss, thereby saving the world. Another victory for the Willis layer! The final Willis layer specific benefit comes in the form of air conditioning. The crust acts as insulation, moderating temperature fluctuations by stopping the cold and the heat (as if) freezing or drying out the soil. This creates a lovely atmosphere for our bug friends to do their work but also protects plant roots from 'heaving' (which sounds disgusting but is actually a process where freezing and thawing causes the soil to shift, potentially uprooting plants).  

Surprisingly by mulching you can declare yourself an Eco Superhero, superior even to Megan and Harry! Wednesday afternoons at University were devoted to three hours of Soil Science. Held in a Hogwarts style gothic classroom, super heated to 30°c, we were lulled to sleep by a Professor so dull and grey, I swear at times he melted into the 18th century stonework. Across the 90 or so hours spent in this cuddly slumber, only one claim made me wake with a start. 'All we need to do to solve global warming and the climate crisis is to increase the organic material in our soil by 1 - 2%'.  Forget Mr 'goofy' Millipeed's horrible solar panel fields, useless wind turbines and unaffordable Green levy, all we need to do is mulch, mulch, mulch. This works through carbon capture and storage by increased organic matter in the soil. This immediately reduces greenhouse gases and then though the Carbon and Nitrogen cycles makes everything else better including hugely reducing the need for fertilisers. Want to know how, well there is a class room in Gloucestershire, where if you can stay awake, you will find out. So put simply if you want to save the world too, mulch - don't propose ludicrous £22bn carbon capture schemes like the new increasingly deranged UK government (who knew that the solution to discovering 'an unexpected £22bn black hole in the UK finances' was to invest £22bn into errr... big holes?).

Not particularly interested in the health of your garden or saving the world. Well the final benefit is simple and not 'Instagram' shallow at all, it just looks better!