Hi! I am Susan Harris and I am talking about Sustainable Gardening. In this clip, I am going to cover the most important yearly job of maintenance in the garden and that is the cleaning and mulching of the borders. Here in Maryland, I do it in the spring. I understand that in some colder climate, they like do it in the fall because the mulch will protect the soil from freezing and thawing throughout the winter which is not good for plants. But here what I do is in spring, normally March, I will remove all of last years leaves that have been blowing around, remove last years debris from the perennial border and I will do some final weeding. I see I still had some weeds here and then I put down -- I cover all of the bare soil with at least two inches of mulch, an organic mulch and I always use the leaf mold, its called. It is just chopped and seasoned leaves that my city collects and then they provide it to us for free. Mulch is the single most important thing that an organic gardener can bring to their garden that's because it does all kinds of great things like prevent weeds. It also holds the moisture. It improves your soil structure and it even attracts the earthworms and all kinds of beneficial microorganisms.

Next, I will be covering another yearly job here in the garden which is a little pruning.