A nice heavy layer of wood chips is a great way to smother out weeds and retain moisture in your soil.

And with this being the case, one would think the “kill two birds with one stone approach” would work well for installing UC Verde Buffalograss…Lay down a thick pad of wood chips over some cardboard or newspaper to kill any existing greenery and then later after the paper has decomposed (but the wood chips remain) install your plugs and the wood will help the newly planted UC Verde to hang onto more H2O. It seems perfectly logical doesn’t it? But sigh, it in fact is not the case.

While the smother method could possibly assist you in the exterminating part of the process, the wood chips do not lend a helpful hand to getting your UC Verde plugs to grow. Actually, it sort of hinders it.

At first glance the lovely wood chips seem like they would be a great mulch, but in fact they tend to block UC Verde’s runners from getting to the ground to root!

If you are going to mulch make sure it’s something fine that the runners can penetrate to reach the soil!

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