Small experiment in the garden. I am using wool , the dirty-not suitable for spinning-pieces of fleece as a mulch. Using wool is not the “experiment” part of this project-plenty of people use wool, especially for crops that prefer cooler roots in the summer. The experiment part is that I am comparing wool alone, wool on top of cardboard and straw on top of cardboard as mulch in the tomato row. Because this is not a real trial, I have a gardener’s choice of tomato varieties. I’m curious to see how long the mulch lasts; if the dirty parts of the fleece fertilize the plants and if fleece alone keep the weeds at bay. I’m aLeo interested to see if the pest pressures on the tomatoes with the wool are less than the straw mulch.

For fans of all things sheep, these are skirtings from a Shetland/Icelandic flock with a beautiful mix of colors. The garden does smell slightly of an unwashed sheep fleece, which is not a deterrent for me, especially since the garden is a distance from the house.

I’ll add an image of the wool mulch when I can.