Mouthful

What in the world are you eating?

Mulching the Futon

26 August 2009 | 11:46 - By Phil Lees

Mulching a futon sounds like a euphemism for disposing of an unwanted hippie’s corpse. Sadly, I mean it quite literally.

Some of my university student habits are hard to kick  - frugality; unabated love for op shops, poor cuts of meat and home brewing -  but this winter convinced me to get off the futon on the floor and buy a real bed which left me with an aging, unsellable futon mat. Now that I have garden space to test out my crazier horticultural theories, it left me with the burning question: can you mulch a futon?

The science says yes.

This research from the University of Minnesota suggested a high degree of success in using wool mulch to suppress garden weeds in both strawberry and apple crops. Wool also retained more moisture than wood mulch. It was, of course, specially designed wool matting but the theory was the same. The wool layer was still permeable to water and nutrients. The down side is that the wool takes at least two years to break down and thus does not provide as much organic matter to the soil as fast as a quickly composting mulch like straw. Closer to the home, Canberran blogger The Duck Herder also reports success in using futon wool to as duck house bedding, much to the chagrin of the wary ducks. There are no further reports on whether the matting became worm food. Across the various permaculture forums, lip service is paid to the fact that you can mulch a futon with very few examples.

Running with the theory that anything organic can be composted, I sliced open the mat.Upon disembowelling, the futon mat consisted of an inorganic foam core surrounded by wool. The wool layer that coated the outside of the futon’s core was already filled with shreds of organic matter – hay, seeds, tiny pieces of dry grass – which I’ve probably now managed to introduce as plants into the garden. I can’t imagine that it they could be worse than the various weeds that are introduced with manure. If you look carefully in the background of the photo, I am already growing a fine crop of stinging nettles under the plums. The opportunity to make nettle tea is there but the will fails me.

So far, the only disadvantage is that the wool is too light to stay in place around the trees and it is pig-ugly. I return home on a windy afternoon and the yard looks like it has been decorated as an unconvincing snow scene (light zephyr) or as a hideous ovine explosion (gale). Heaping on a layer of soil assists negative aerodynamics. I'll report back in two years on the progress.

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Comments (5)

12 Jan 2010 23:55 AEST

Flatoutbenj

From:

benj@flatoutfuton.com

Purely in the interest of " someones got to do it " to find out if its possible. And seeing as I am the local futon man, I' ll probably step up and have a good aussie crack at it. After all Futons are an Australian invention. (he says with tongue in cheek) I've got some spare cotton wadding that I'll put into the rather crusty compost bin and check on it every once in a while. I'll leave my email if anyone really wants to know. I should also probably declare commercial interest.

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17 Sep 2009 21:57 AEST

jodie

From: elwood

Careful with the underlays!

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/asbestos-used-for-carpet-underlays-book-20090822-eu18.html

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01 Sep 2009 10:03 AEST

Phil

From: Melbourne

Carpet

The underlay might be synthetic.

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31 Aug 2009 17:20 AEST

Peter

From: Warrnambool

All Things Organic

Perhaps you will have better luck than I did with my carpet underlay which has done nothing for my broadbeans!

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31 Aug 2009 16:48 AEST

Nick

From: Brunswick

Insert title here

I've recently contemplated putting (1) an old bathmat, and (2) an old pair of jeans into my compost bin. I decided against it because I'll be moving house in a couple of months, and will be dumping the compost onto the current house's garden, and having a sludgy brown bathmat and/or jeans in there (the compost is currently a bit wetter than ideal) doesn't seem like a good idea. So take comfort you're not the only one having these ideas, even if you are the only one acting on them.

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About this Blog

A blog about what the world eats, when and where it eats it, and why it matters to us all. Only much less ambitious than that sounds and with more excruciating puns.

Phil Lees grew up in rural Victoria, the first generation in his family to not have lived on the farm and thereby not slaughter their own meat.

In 2005 he moved to Cambodia and started the nation’s first food blog, Phnomenon.com, named after the best pun that he has ever made. It turns out that Cambodian food is delicious and unlike the warnings in most guidebooks, is not likely to kill you with any immediacy. Gridskipper called him a “national treasure”. Lonely Planet’s Greater Mekong guide called him “the unofficial pimp of Cambodian cuisine”. The New York Times laughed at a funny hotdog he saw.

Phil makes a mean sausage, a hoppy pale ale, a modest laksa. He owns three barbecues and is in the market for a fourth.

 
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