I went out of town this past weekend and I was a little worried about my garden.

You see, we are going through a heat wave here in Toronto. Friday’s temps were 31 Celsius (87.8), Saturday and Sunday were 32 (89.6 F) and 34 C (93.2 F), and yesterday ended up reaching 35 C (95 F). Now those temps wouldn’t necessarily be so bad if it were dry heat, but here in Toronto we seem to get a lot of humidity. If you add in the humidity factor the temps were well over 40 Celsius (104 F) each day. Those temps are enough to make me wilt so it’s no wonder I was worried about my plants, especially all the new ones that I finally planted last week.

I should have watered the garden on Friday seeing as we were leaving early Saturday morning but I was very tired for some reason. Not watering added to my worry. I was sure I’d come home to wilted or dead plants. Lucky for me it did rain sometime on Saturday.

I’m sure the shredded red cedar mulch that I put on the garden helped too. We covered all the bare spots between the plants with two to three inches of cedar mulch. This helps keep the weeds down. Actually- it makes them virtually non-existent. It also helps keep the soil moist too. Well, it won’t if you don’t water at all, but if you give your garden a good watering every two or three days the soil should stay slightly moist and your plants will be happy. As long as I do a good deep watering I don’t have to water every day, even during a heat wave- apparently.

We use the red coloured mulch because 1. we like the look of it, and 2. because in studies it was said to help tomatoes grow faster. We do grow some tomatoes in one corner of our garden and they do do well.

I even put some mulch on my potted plants to help them retain moisture.

Do you use mulch on your garden beds? If you do, what kind do you use? And have you noticed any difference in your garden since you started using it?