# a new way to lay down mulch



## chuckwood (Apr 4, 2016)

Spreading mulch around in a garden is labor intensive, so I've cooked up a way to lay down hay mulch using round bales. I get these cheap via Craigslist, bales that have been sitting out in the weather and are spoiled and sold cheap for ten to 15 bucks a bale. I figured I could unroll these things in between rows, sorta like unrolling a roll of toilet paper. But there's a big problem, these bales are four feet wide, too unwieldy, as they are, I can only move them with a tractor. So I used a chainsaw to cut them in half, making them manageable. As things went along, I figured out how to unroll them as close as possible to my sugar snaps that are around 5 inches high right now, and how to get them to lay down an evenly sized mat of hay as I went along. I've used square bales as mulch previously, but it's time consuming, and the square bales puff up a lot as you spread them around. I prefer a dense, compact layer of hay or straw that will work better to keep moisture in and weeds from growing. So far, this has worked very well today. I got everything mulched in much less time it would have taken with the square bales. All I had to do was walk up and down my rows, unrolling the half bales. Sometimes the layer of hay would fizzle out and stop laying, and I'd just pull out another layer on the roll and it would continue laying down hay. This is the first time I've ever used a chainsaw for cutting hay bales. My first time cutting didn't work right, the baling twine got caught in my saw sprocket and spooled up in there making a big mess and stopping my saw. After that, I made sure I got all the twine off before cutting, and things went smoothly. My saw exhaust did catch the bale on fire for a minute, but it was no big deal, had some water handy.


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## Dave6390 (Apr 4, 2016)

You gotta love ingenuity!


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## chuckwood (Apr 4, 2016)

Got the job done quickly last nite, here's what it looks like today. Used a saw with a 28 inch bar to slice the bales in half. I think this would work well mulching potatoes as well. Got sugar snaps coming up in there right now, limas to come later after the snaps are done.


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## amberg (Apr 18, 2016)

Very nice I like that. How did you keep the saw chain from clogging up with the straw or hay?


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## chuckwood (Apr 18, 2016)

amberg said:


> Very nice I like that. How did you keep the saw chain from clogging up with the straw or hay?



On my first try, baling twine got tangled up in the sprocket and locked my chain, sorta like hitting saw chaps would do. Next try I made sure all the twine was gone and it went well. I layed my straw down in a dense mat at less than half the time it would have taken with the smaller square bales spreading everything around by picked it all up and spreading it around by hand.


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