Reduce the appearance of fungus with rubber mulch
Posted by Jamie Kavanagh on
Have you ever looked at your freshly painted fence only to see tiny brown marks on it? Or looked at your walls or car to see the same? Those tiny brown marks are incredibly hard to remove as you may already know. Yet they are easily preventable.
Most Americans who own their own home are house proud. It’s part of who we are. So when something as small but as annoying as these sticky brown spots begin appearing on our property it’s only natural that we want to do something about it.
Those brown spots could be artillery fungus. It’s a growth that thrives in warm wet conditions, such as that provided by using wood mulch in your garden. During spring and fall, conditions are ripe for the fungus to grow and spores can be ejected 15-20 feet into the air, which is where it gets its name.
If you have wood mulch close to your fence, house or car, you will likely begin seeing this fungus within a couple of years. It’s a soil-based fungus, so even if you remove the wood mulch, you’re going to have to treat the soil too.
The small brown spots are very difficult to clean. Power washing, detergents and even scrubbing have difficulty removing them. Most non-destructive methods of removing the fungus fail. The only really effective way to remove artillery mold once it’s on your property is to scrape it off by hand. Difficult to do at the best of times, made even more difficult if you don’t want to damage the area!
Not every garden will get artillery fungus, not even every garden that uses wood mulch will get it. The trouble is that you won’t know until it arrives. Then, once you have it you not only have to remove those spots on your property, you also have to remove the wood mulch, remove the fungus and replace the mulch with fresh.
Or, you could use rubber mulch instead.
Unlike wood mulch, rubber mulch isn’t a breeding ground for mold or fungus. It doesn’t play host to artillery or any type of annoying property-harming life forms. It doesn’t need monitoring, it doesn’t need changing or topping up year on year and won’t harm your property.
Other than that it does everything wood mulch does only better. It lasts longer, doesn’t absorb moisture, doesn’t decay, doesn’t blow away and doesn’t work as a home for insects. It does however provide insulation for the ground, help keep moisture in the soil and provide attractive, effective ground cover. If that doesn’t make it the ideal landscape product, we don’t know what will!