Dog safe mulch?

[Charlie'sMom]

I know I haven't been posting as much - the last year has been insane, with buying a house, moving to a new city, starting a new job, and planning a wedding (which was way more work than I had ever anticipated). We are working on our landscaping, and we are in a pretty dry place in Alberta - so we are installing underground drip system sprinklers, but also need to mulch our trees, and shrubs.
I know a lot of mulches can carry fungus and bacteria, but it is hard to find information on what is good and what is bad - so I thought I would turn here. We need a dog safe mulch, preferably a dark coloured one to co-ordinate with our other landscape materials.

 

[CMDRTED]

I use "Rubberriffic" it is made from ground up tires. The guys leave it alone, other than when it was first puyt down they sniffed the snot out of it, but that was it. No Bugs, no mould, no yucky chemicals. Looks like real mulch. Some cheaper imitations look like CxxP!

 

[Charlie'sMom]

Thanks! I will look into wether or not we can get it around here - just to ask, how well does it do with holding in the moisture? Is it comparable to regular mulch?

 

[Garden_girl]

I have never used rubber mulch, but I do like how it looks. I would imagine it is pricey, but it far outlasts bark chips or shredded bark (I have to reapply every year) so the cost probably evens out in that respect. As far as safety, I've read that it's non-toxic, & they use rubber mulch on playgrounds for kids instead of bark mulch. Besides the things you mention, another downside to wood mulch is that it can play host to a variety of insects. This year, I am up to my eyeballs in earwigs because of my fondness for shredded bark mulch.

I think shredded bark would be best for holding in moisture and cutting down on weeds as there is no air/light getting down to the surface of the soil and the wood retains moisture.

If I could have a do-over though-I would replace all my mulch with the rubber stuff.

 

[KodysGrandma]

Just DON'T buy cocoa mulch- Deadly

 

[Charlie'sMom]

Just DON'T buy cocoa mulch- Deadly

Not to worry - we are going for pet safe, primarily black volcanic rock, with charcoal pavers, and raised planting beds. The lava rock evaporates water though, so we need a mulch product for the shrubs and such!

 

[R Taft]

We use a lot of stone/pebbles here in Australia as mulch around trees/garden beds.........Small river stones, looks pretty too and it lasts forever. I think most of our stones/pebbles are about 1/2" - 1'' in size. It really cuts out the weed problem too and you can just move it aside when you want to plant more. You can get different colors from different areas hers. From white to dark brown

 

[new_2_newf]

I went organic...we have a company that makes 'local' mulch from local tree waste. They separate out the cedar, so i got some non-cedar stuff for my beds. Sulley doesn't like the feel of it on his feet, so he leaves it alone for the most part, except to bark at it on occasion.

 

[bria]

The natural cedar mulch is fine for dogs but I caution the wood chips stick to every part of them especially their tails. It's a bugger trying to keep them clean and the house still better than mud. I just put down 30 bags of mulch last week. The coloured ones have dye and are toxic especially since a lot of them like to chomp on wood chips so stick to the natural though it may not match your landscape. I so wanted to put down the red mulch but then found out it was toxic to dogs.

Susan

 

[Charlie'sMom]

I think that we will stick with the rubber mulch ... unless we find that the combination of landscape fabric and volcanic rock actually hold the moisture in okay, Troy thinks that the landscape fabric will keep the volcanic rock from evaporating the water.