Mold in My Lungs is a Good Thing!

Yesterday after going into Ucon for straw bales I came home and found that my pallets were too full of moldy hay for me to be able to unload anything. So for the rest of the day I covered the swale with moldy straw and found that in the process all of the good 'being outdoors' feelings crept up and I found myself scouting out moldy straw and bark mulch so that I could finish the project. There were some bales that looked good and green but it feels wrong to me feeding animals anything that sends up a big cloud of black or white mold when you open it. So even those bales that weren't as bad I am putting on the swale.

Now what I want to point out is that moldy mulch is the BEST mulch. Why? The mold and bacteria fuse the bale together. That hay forms a weed free barrier similar to a piece of wood or cardboard, it is fused and ready to go. Along with that advantage though is my favorite part: it is partially digested already. It is like the yogurt of mulch. There are happy bacteria and other mold that will feel right at home in your soil and needs very little encouragement from you to start improving your soil. The moldy hay smells sweet and like food, even if it isn't good food for animals anything. I split it in the smallest intact sheets and place it over whatever is bare soil.

Why cover all bare soil? Not even so much to keep weeds out...it is to prevent wind and sun from SUCKING the water out of my swale. The sides that were covered just with evergreen boughs had moist soil under the branches. The sides with moldy straw have moisture visible creeping out into the bare sides, actually trying to share it's water with the bare spots! So I can't wait any longer to get those sides covered, even without the high heat of summer the drying effect of this Fall wind/breeze is raising it's ugly head. So I am out hunting up any moldy straw or hay on our property that has been overlooked. The other alternative that I am considering is taking more dirty bedding from the goats for the inner edge of the swale. Wasting all of that good nutrition on the outside swale wall makes no sense so I may have to pretend the moldy hay is like legos and shift things a big so that everything is covered with more nutritional mulch on the inside and the inert mulch on the outside.

Why not use wood mulch to insulate the  the outer wall of the swale? Those small pieces of wood do not SEAL the edge from the wind. It would shade from the sun but the wind will just pierce and run around inside those wood chips as long as they were at a depth that would just cover the edge and not spill over into the walkway. If I could stack it a foot deep it would be okay, but still not as sealing as a solid slab of moldy hay.

For anyone who has sensitive lungs or if you are working in enclose space it is important to evaluate the risk of making yourself sick with moldy material. I have to either wear a mask or wait to work with it until I have a breeze to move the mold away from me while applying the mulch. It isn't good for lungs, just your garden!