Mulch falling from the trees

My new perennial bed near the back of the house is covered with needles from a big white pine (Pinus strobus) nearby. 

Pine needles on the new bed in October

When the area was lawn, I didn’t notice how many needles fell from the tree, perhaps because our focus was on raking them off the grass.

    Now I realize that those pine needles are providing natural mulch without my intervention. Is that a good thing? A couple of persistent urban legends warn against pine needle mulch.

    In the South, you can buy compressed bales of pine needles, commonly called pine straw, in various shapes and sizes at the garden center. 

Bales of pine straw at Space Coast Landscape Supply in Florida

Proponents point out that this mulch is pretty, it’s slow to decompose because of the needles’ waxy coating, it doesn’t blow around or pack down to create a water barrier, and it’s less dense than bark mulch. A 40-pound bale of pine straw covers as much ground as 30 cubic feet of other much heavier mulches. By contrast, big bags of bark mulch that I purchased recently contain 3 cubic feet each. I can barely lift them, and a bag covers a dishearteningly small area.

Bark mulch, heavy as all get out

    Tossing pine needles around has got to be easier than schlepping those bags of bark mulch. Having the tree and the wind spread pine needles is even less work. (My recent mulch favorite, arborist wood chips, also has the advantage of being less dense than bark).

Arborist wood chips make great mulch too

    It’s often suggested that pine needle mulch will acidify soil. The argument is that since the needles have a lower pH than average soil, adding them to soil must make it more acidic. Many gardeners hesitate to mulch with oak leaves for the same reason. But science doesn’t substantiate this.

    Soil has tremendous buffering capacity. As Robert Pavlis points out in this blog post, rain becomes acidic as it falls, picking up carbon dioxide from the air and converting it to carbonic acid. This is true even without the pollution that causes acid rain. If rain hasn’t changed soil pH over millennia, you’re not going to do it with a few pine needles or oak leaves.

Pine needles can't overpower soil's buffering capacity

    Second, pine needles contain a group of organic compounds called terpenes that people worry may suppress growth in the garden. Terpenes act as insecticides, preventing insects from eating the needles. They may also help suppress growth of other plants under the tree. But once the needles fall from the tree and hit the ground, the volatile terpenes quickly float into air or water—that’s why the needles stop giving off that pleasing pine scent. Plants can and do grow under our white pine.

Shade lovers growing at the base of the white pine

    Recent research suggests terpenes help trigger rainfall by combining with free radicals and oxygen in the atmosphere, forming aerosols of polarized molecules that collect water and grow into clouds. Trees aren’t as passive as we used to think!

Conifers don't just wait for rain

    I’ll soon be able to assess whether pine needles are improving soil, suppressing weeds, and helping to retain moisture in my new bed. I’m optimistic.