Beware Of Contaminated Organic Mulch

How can you be sure that the  compost or mulch that you buy in the garden store is really organic. Why should you even care? It's simple really. If you grow vegetables in soil, whatever is in the soil can end up in the plant and in the fruit or vegetables through the plant's vascular system. Many dangerous pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals are soluble in water and can end up in your food.

When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed. Later many were wrecked and the lumber chipped up into mulch, that was taken to large fields to decay under plastic tarps. While this was a good use of Katrina debris in theory, in reality it was a bad idea.

Lowes and Home Depot initially picked up bags of Katrina debris mulch, but quickly stopped selling it once tests confirmed it was high in lead, arsenic and pesticides. While Katrina debris mulch is no longer a widespread problem, local mulch manufacturers still get a lot of their product from wrecked homes. It they are unscrupulous and don't check for lead paint, etc, you can end up with poisons in your garden mulch and compost.

Lumber mills routinely sell bark mulch and wood waste mulch. This can be safe, for the most part, it no chemicals were added to the wood. Beware of wood that was once preserved. Arsenic was once the favored wood preservative.

Local Christmas tree recycling programs also provide tons of mulch and compost. However, I don't know what those people put on the tree to preserve it. Some trees are sprayed with chemical shellac, fake snow and so on, to keep them green.

Your best bet when buying compost and mulch that is safe, is to find a local organic farm or dairy and ask the farmer if you can have some of the older manure. Bring it home and cover it with a tarp for a few months, turning it from time to time, and you will get the best compost no money can buy.

Another alternative for safe garden mulch is to make you own compost using a drum type compost bin that you fill with food waste, yard trimmings, leaves, etc and turn every couple of days until it is done. We use a home compost maker and I swear by the product it makes for growing tomatoes and other vegetables.

Another bad source for mulch is human waste. In many cities there are programs for using sewage sludge, mixed with yard trimmings and recycled Christmas trees to make compost. In Austin Texas they call it "Dillo Dirt". It clearly states on the bag "not for food crops." Sludge based compost contains high levels of pharmaceutical residues, pesticides, and a host of other chemicals. It probably should be buried as toxic waste but this is only because of how us humans poison ourselves and think that flushing anything down the toilet gets rid of it forever..

Finally, when buying mulch or compost check the label. Some companies call themselves something Organic Mulch Inc, however the bag you are buying might not be. If if is organic compost or mulch it will say so on the label. Don't get fooled by the company name instead of what is really in the bag.