Stone as a mulch around shrubs

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schreibdave
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Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by schreibdave » July 31st, 2017, 3:38 pm

How bad is it for landscaping plants - shrubs, trees, perennials - to use river stone as a mulch rather than wood mulch? I am looking to reduce my annual maintenance and also eliminate having the rain wash mulch onto my sidewalk.

Thanks

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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by Billybob » August 2nd, 2017, 12:11 pm

When mulch breaks down it add some organic material. I did river jacks around shrubs near my pool. It looks nice but the weeds still pop up

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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by rtomek » August 2nd, 2017, 5:38 pm

The developer of my subdivision did landscaping rocks at every house. Somewhere between half to two-thirds of the homeowners ended up getting it taken out and replaced with regular wood mulch, with me being one of them. The low annual maintenance thing is great and all of the perennials handle it just fine. As Billybob metnioned, weeds are just as bad or worse with rocks but gly is cheap and will take care of them. The biggest downside is that if you ever want to dig or plant something else, it's a PITA.

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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by TimmyG » August 2nd, 2017, 9:08 pm

rtomek wrote:
August 2nd, 2017, 5:38 pm
The biggest downside is that if you ever want to dig or plant something else, it's a PITA.
^This.

I would only ever consider stone for mulching a fully planned shrub/conifer bed, never ever for a perennial bed that needs frequent rework. I just converted yet another stone-mulched bed this weekend (from the previous owner). When finished, it will use compost as the mulch.

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 2nd, 2017, 9:25 pm

Fully agreed that crushed rock beds are a real pain to later change over to something else if the crushed rock is just set in the soil. After a few years, the freeze/thaw cycles significantly interconnect the soil and the crushed rock, making it real hard to remove the rock without taking off not just the crushed rock, but about 3-4 more inches of intermingled rock and soil. Been there, done that. It wasn't fun.

A trick I've learned to greatly simplify potential future removal is to line the bottom of the new crushed rock bed with a very heavyweight landscape fabric. If you can't find a real heavyweight one, double up a lighter weight one. In this way, the crushed rock stays separate from the soil.

If you ever want to remove the rock bed, you can then shovel the crushed rock out of the bed down to about 1-rock size above the landscape fabric. Once there's little enough rock on the landscape fabric, the fabric can be lifted up with the remaining single-layer of crushed rock on top, and presto, all of the crushed rock is out of the bed. This is still a lot of work, because it's hard to shovel crushed rock and it's heavy. However, we've used this approach with great success compared to the intermingled soil/rock approach I mention in the first paragraph above.


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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 2nd, 2017, 9:33 pm

rtomek wrote:
August 2nd, 2017, 5:38 pm
As Billybob metnioned, weeds are just as bad or worse with rocks but gly is cheap and will take care of them.
Weeds in rock beds are usually a combination of two factors: insufficient rock depth to begin with, and/or rocks that were too small, so that soil and/or organic matter which blows into the rock bed doesn't percolate down in between the rocks, but builds up soil in the spaces between the rocks.

The first item above is addressed by having a rock bed of at least 6" depth. The second is addressed by having rocks no smaller than about 1.75" to 2" in size, so that there is enough room for sand / dirt / etc., to percolate down through the rocks.

We get essentially zero weeds in our rock beds that were established with the above approach. Our prior rock beds, which used 1-inch rocks with a bed depth of about 3 inches, were a weed disaster.

By the way, even bigger rocks are even better. Around here, drainage swales at commercial establishments using rocks of no smaller than about 4" to 6" at a depth of about 1.5 feet get zero weeds as well.

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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by TimmyG » August 2nd, 2017, 10:27 pm

I'm dealing with beds with 6" of stone on top of tarps...not landscape fabric...tarps. I don't know if the original owner just had a stockpile of old tarps or what, but needless to say, tarps are a ridiculous choice for a weed barrier. And under all the wood mulch? Either more tarps or the plastic bags the mulch came in. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I concur what ken-n-nancy say about the size of the rocks/stones. My stone-mulched beds have ~1" crushed rock. They've been in place long enough to fill with blown dirt and organic matter and are now havens for summer weeds. Columbines in particular happily volunteer in the stone.

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Re: Stone as a mulch around shrubs

Post by schreibdave » August 3rd, 2017, 6:30 am

Thanks for the responses. I have decided against the rocks for along the walk way (all I am doing now) because the snowblower will get them. Better to have mulch thrown into the lawn than 2" rock.

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