Mulch is a protective covering, usually of organic matter such as leaves, straw, or peat, placed around plants to prevent the evaporation of moisture, the freezing of roots, and the growth of weeds. Mulch is one of the great ways to help your garden prosper and grow. However, too much mulch can be a BIG problem. You must know what mulch is good to put on your garden and determine how much you should put in, so be aware.

Here are some of the good things I recommend to put on your garden:

• Ground corncobs
• Peat moss
• Cotton gin wastes
• Shredded cotton burs
• Oat
• Rice
• Cottonseed shells
• Sphagnum moss
• Some variety of weeds
• Crop residues
• Types of grasses and hay

How much mulch? The amount that does the best job for you, your soil, and your plants. Working out an ideal mulch program takes some experimenting, some trials with various materials and depths. It's only common sense to check on the most plentiful free and reasonable sources, to test the effects of different mulches in your climate locale, your own soil type and timing. But the program more than pays — in dividends of better home-grown foods, a finer soil, and happier gardeners.

Some vegetables and organically grown vegetables, like tomatoes and corn, need a thoroughly warmed soil to encourage ideal growth. A mulch applied too early in the spring, before ground temperatures have had a chance to climb a little in frost-zone areas, may slow up such crops. Once plants are well started, though, and the weather levels off, mulch is definitely in order to conserve needed water, stimulate topsoil microorganisms, and mainly condition the soil.

Mulches influence moisture penetration in few ways. Bulky materials such as wood chips, sawdust and straw temporarily hold a fair amount volume of water, and thus prevent loss by runoff when the rate of application — natural or artificial — is too rapid for soil penetration. This may be more important with a heavy silt than with a porous sand soil. However, maintaining the soil structure loose and open may be the most important factor involved. Rain beating on an exposed soil compacts it and subsequent baking in the sun almost completely gets rid of its capacity to absorb water rapidly. The open soil structure found under a mulch is also favorable to rapid air exchange. Roots require oxygen for the respiration process through which energy for growth is released.

I hope these are a few good mulching tips for you.