Dear Dr. Dirt: I am considering planting Knock Out roses and grass along the south side of my house. A friend suggested I use the new rubber (old tires) mulch since it is more environmentally friendly ...

Happy almost spring! As with so many of these thorny eco-dilemmas, the answer depends upon whom you ask. Passionate people on both sides of the mulch aisle will try to convince you that this product ...

Two garden terms you might often see mentioned in these columns are “compost” (decaying organic matter) to enrich our sandy soil and “mulch” (material spread around plants to reduce evaporation, ...

Q: I recently put down recycled rubber as mulch for my front flower bed. It looks great now, and I like what I’ve heard about it not being an attractant for insects. I dug out the bed, removed an ...

American drivers wear out nearly 300 million tires annually. That’s a lot of rubber to find a use for. One solution is to shred it, dye it, spread it around plants and call it mulch. But wait! Rubber ...

Every gardener wants the best soil for their garden. How do you know if your soil is "good"? What do you add to make it good? When you go to a plant nursery or the gardening section of a big box store ...

Mulch is a blanket, an organic material applied to bare soil around plants. Effective mulches include shredded hardwood bark, pine needles, coarse compost, and shredded native tree trimmings. Mulching ...

Mulching soil is one of the kindest ways that we can look after our gardens. Well-rotted compost or manure will help to bind light, sandy soils as well as increase the amount of moisture that can be ...

Rubber playground surface material may protect kids from some injuries but be harboring a different source of harm, a study in Boston suggests. Researchers tested lead levels in the soil, sand, mulch ...