I was teaching our new class of Master Gardeners recently about mulches and the question about pine straw came about. One lady sheepishly admitted that while she lived in Tennessee, they would buy pine straw at the local nursery. “Everyone did,” she said, “it was THE thing to do to have a nice landscape!” She’s telling the story correctly. Right under our collective noses (and perhaps in your very own yard) is a great gardening tool that we have typically shunned that is used elsewhere around the country to make landscape beds look outstanding- Pine straw.
Raked up and often bagged to be disposed, this all natural, completely organic, and recyclable material is an outstanding mulch for your garden and landscape.
Matter of fact, pine straw has been a popular landscape ground cover throughout the South for years. In fact, it is one of the most widely used mulches for all size projects ranging from residential flower beds to industrial complexes and highway landscapes in states just east of my home in Texas.
Throughout the South, the needles are raked into bales of pine straw and sold in retail outlets as a landscape mulch. I only know of one local business that sells pine straw in my home county of Angelina. I held a seminar years ago to share with east Texas forest landowners this potential stream of income and got absolutely no response.
Some folks will say that pine straw makes your soil acidic. I think that we’ve just repeated this so often that we think it is fact, but research would say otherwise. Even though green pine needles are acidic, by the time a pine needle dries up and is ready to drop off the tree, they are hardly acidic. And while brown pine needles would register below neutral on the pH scale, they do not have the capacity to appreciably lower the soil pH.
Interestingly, even pollution-free rainwater falls at a pH of 5.6– a much more acidic value than pine straw ever would be. According to rainfall records published by Lufkin Daily News at our airport, for the past 30+ years we receive just at 50 inches of rain a year on average. It is our rainfall coupled with our inherent soil types and some fertilization practices that make our soils acidic.
So, let’s brag on pine straw’s abilities. Among its many attributes, pine straw mulch insulates tender roots from temperature extremes keeping the soils warm during cool spells and cool during warm spells. It conserves soil moisture by reducing water evaporation rates and moisture loss. Pine straw also eliminates erosion caused by wind and rain splash impact.
Unlike some other mulches, pine needles mesh together and hold together during hard rains, heavy winds, and even on landscapes with considerable slope. Pine straw doesn’t float and wash out of beds as much as wood ship mulches. This helps keep walkways cleaner and further reduces maintenance.
Pine straw remains loose and friable and does not form a top crust like grass clippings, leaves, and some other mulches. This looser mulch allows water to infiltrate readily into the soil for plant availability and avoids wasteful runoff of irrigation. The large air pockets within the mulch may in fact help to dry the ground out, alleviating excessively wet soils.
The fine texture and uniform color of pine straw is simply more aesthetically pleasing to some gardeners. The non-detracting, earthly look brings out the color, contrast and texture of landscapes. Pine straw also prevents plants, flowers and fruit from becoming splashed with mud. Added annually, it gives landscapes a fresh clean and renewed appearance.
It breaks down more slowly than wood mulch, so it needs to be re-applied less often. It is also lightweight and is easily handled.
Typically, new applications will require three inches of straw that settles by half to an inch and a half. That equals to half a pound of straw per square foot. An additional inch per year is required to maintain the proper depth.
Compared to other organic mulches that you’ll purchase, most of us in areas blessed with pines will have plenty of free, locally sourced, natural, free-range, wild-caught, and organic pine straw to rake from one area of your landscape and use in another.
