On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 04:54:50 GMT, "John"
wrote:

Is there any alternatives to organic mulch that is "permanent?"
I am thinking (wild guess here) something like recycled tires,

The Anasazi Indians and later Southwestern Native Americans used mulch
to control soil temperature (I may be making that up but I think I
heard so). To get their crops up in the Spring, they would use dark
colored sands and gravels as mulch to heat the soils. In the summer
they would switch to light colored sands, etc., to keep the soils
cooler.

So, the mulch was used to retain soil moisture and keep soil
temperatures in the correct range.

In my spare time I have been goofing around with container glass
recycling - grinding up bottles and trying to figure out what to do
with the particulate glass, termed cullet in that industry. One use
of the larger sized particles is mulch and you could use clear glass
for "heat reflecting" mulch and brown glass for "heat absorbing"
mulch.

I have been using it mostly in potted plants so I do not end up with a
hazardous waste site in my back yard. Smaller sized glass particles
corrode fairly rapidly and would release the chemicals in the glass to
the soil, so I think you would have to use the bigger, pea
gravel-sized glass to avoid that.

So smooth glass cullet is a mulch possibility but I would not
recommend it until I had some test results from what comes out of the
glass, long-term that is.

Rusty Mase


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