Rice straw as mulch

[connda]

My wife has a substantial portion of our yard planted with a flowering perennial.  The 'flowers' are a purplish white stalk that appears early in the year and is edible.  However for the 11 months that these don't produce, they simple are rows of dominate plants and rows of dirt where every variety of grass and weed imaginable grows.  I'd like to mulch between the rows to keep the weeds under control.

 

So the real question here is: Does rice straw make for a good mulch. Right at the moment I have access to just about as much as I want. 

[khwaibah]

Rice straw makes a fantastic mulch. It gets plowed back into the ground about my place ,NO burning. The wife mixes the straw with rice hulks and cow AND any thing else for compost. 

[cooked]

I use rice straw but I don't think it would suppress weeds that are already growing strongly. It deteriorates pretty rapidly also.

I would consider using Roundup, shock, horror, easy enough to protect the plants while spraying, as a one off solution and then start mulching.

[khwaibah]

13 minutes ago, cooked said:

I use rice straw but I don't think it would suppress weeds that are already growing strongly. It deteriorates pretty rapidly also.

I would consider using Roundup, shock, horror, easy enough to protect the plants while spraying, as a one off solution and then start mulching.

 

Using Roundup. I don't think so.  It takes sometime but turning the ground over and making compost is far better than using Rounduo particularly when you have a serious large area . If your a city slicker living   in town thats a different subject and even then I would find another way. The op asked if rice straw  makes a good mulch, yes. and does it help keep the other grass and weeds down also a yes.

Edited December 12, 2016 by khwaibah

[chiang mai]

+1 for rice straw as mulch, and as ground cover instead of coconut husk to hold moisture in the ground - it looks slightly odd at first but soon decays/discolours to where it looks OK, if appearance is a concern.

[cooked]

On 12/12/2016 at 6:01 PM, khwaibah said:

 

Using Roundup. I don't think so.  It takes sometime but turning the ground over and making compost is far better than using Rounduo particularly when you have a serious large area . If your a city slicker living   in town thats a different subject and even then I would find another way. The op asked if rice straw  makes a good mulch, yes. and does it help keep the other grass and weeds down also a yes.

Insinuating that I'm a city slicker is a bit insulting, isn't it? I'm not. Only townies would claim that Roundup is never to be used under any circumstances. It isn't without problems but compared to many other substances (diesl. sugar, alcohol) in every day use its application can be justified for one off jobs.

If the weeds have got to the stage that the OP seems to indicate then you would have to pile up straw over a metre high in order to get rid of them. Mulching is good for:

keeping moisture in the soil

adding to the biological activity of the soil (including snakes in our case but that doesn't matter)

preventing weed seeds from germinating/succeeding, or if they do poke their head through the mulching they will be relatively easy to remove as their root system will be near the surface.

Getting back ro Roundup: I used this once in our vegetable garden when I got here five years ago, regular tilling of the soil plus as much mulching as possible has reduced weeds to the few seedlings that get imported along with cow manure.

 

[khwaibah]

4 minutes ago, cooked said:

Insinuating that I'm a city slicker is a bit insulting, isn't it? I'm not. Only townies would claim that Roundup is never to be used under any circumstances. It isn't without problems but compared to many other substances (diesl. sugar, alcohol) in every day use its application can be justified for one off jobs.

If the weeds have got to the stage that the OP seems to indicate then you would have to pile up straw over a metre high in order to get rid of them. Mulching is good for:

keeping moisture in the soil

adding to the biological activity of the soil (including snakes in our case but that doesn't matter)

preventing weed seeds from germinating/succeeding, or if they do poke their head through the mulching they will be relatively easy to remove as their root system will be near the surface.

Getting back ro Roundup: I used this once in our vegetable garden when I got here five years ago, regular tilling of the soil plus as much mulching as possible has reduced weeds to the few seedlings that get imported along with cow manure.

 

 

That got your ears up. I have used Roundup in other locations BUT when your dealing with 8+ rai it is impractical. For a city slicker on their vegetable garden it maybe ok. Anyone that tries to use Roundup on our property SWMBO will kill them and yes she knows what it is.