If you think of all it can do, you’ll thank those pines for the
pine straw they’re raining into
your yard.

Yes, somebody has to rake it all up. But pine straw can be more
of a blessing than a chore,
said Mel Garber, a horticulturist with the University of Georgia
Extension Service.

“If you use it right, pine straw can actually help you have less
yard work to do,” Garber said.

Pine straw can free you, he said, from having to do so much:

Mowing. Contoured pine straw islands, with just a few
plants, can replace large areas of
high-maintenance lawn. “Where you already have groups of shrubs
or trees, use pine straw to
tie them together,” Garber said. “Then you won’t have to mow
around them individually.”

Watering. “Sunshine and wind will take away much less
water if the soil surface is covered
with mulch,” Garber said. Reduce water needs with pine straw
mulch around shrubs and in
flower beds.

Weeding. “Mulches help control weeds,” he said. “That
provides two advantages: One, you
don’t have to pull weeds yourself. And two, you don’t have to
spray chemical herbicides
around your yard.”

Pine straw actually falls year-round, said extension forester
Dave Moorhead. But needle-fall is
heaviest in fall, winter and early spring.

If you have more pine straw than you can use in the fall, just
find an out-of-the-way place to
pile it up and save it.

You could be happy you saved it next spring; for all the reasons
it’s so good in your
landscape, pine straw can be just as valuable as a mulch in your
vegetable garden.

It can help keep the soil moist in small gardens, raised bed
gardens or small beds of vegetable
plantings. It can also be good for mulching small fruits, such
as strawberries or blueberries.

It can also help keep soil from washing from heavy rains, Garber
said. That protects water
quality and keeps you from having to repair eroded areas.

Here are some tips, Garber said, to help make the most of your
pine straw.

Don’t remove the old pine straw. “One of the benefits of
mulching is the organic matter it
adds to the soil as it decomposes,” he said.

Replenish. Don’t replace. Just add new straw on top of
the old to make a layer at least two to
three inches thick. That’s the least it will take to be
effective.

Don’t pile it too thick. “I don’t know that it will hurt
so much,” Garber said. “But any more
than about six inches just won’t do any more good.”

Don’t push it up close to the stems. Especially with
azaleas, he said, mulch piled up around
the stems can lead a second root system to develop. That often
happens at the expense of the
deeper root system, which leaves the azalea even more
susceptible to drought damage.

Don’t just stuff it under the branches. Spread it beyond
the drip line, the line right under
the outermost leaves. “Getting it over the feeder roots is the
key,” Garber said.

Mulch young trees. “It’s really important in the first
two or three years,” he said. “With
shallow-rooted trees like dogwood or redbud or crape myrtle it’s
good to mulch even after
that.”

Don’t put plastic or landscape fabric under the straw
unless your main purpose is complete
weed control. If that’s the case, you won’t need as thick a
layer of straw.

“In most cases,” Garber said, “pine straw that’s two inches deep
after it settles does 90 percent
of what you’d expect the fabric or plastic liner to do. Four or
five inches of fresh straw will
settle to about two inches.”