Every December, many of the city’s residents bring home a small conifer for the winter holidays — and then discard them in early January.
Mulchfest is part of the city’s adaptation to this cycle: deploying large chipper trucks at numerous locations around the city, where people can bring their trees to be chipped, and optionally take home a bag of the resulting material to be used as mulch.
While most people just leave their tree, or perhaps take home a small bag of pine chips, there doesn’t seem to be any real limit to how much mulch you’re allowed to take, so I’ve learned to bring a shopping cart and a stack of empty tote bags, so I can bring home enough for a dozen sidewalk treebeds around the neighborhood.
The mix of pine needles, twigs, and chips will slowly break down over the coming year to provide a stream of supplemental nutrients to the soil, as well as improving moisture absorption and retention and building soil health.
