We are big believers in deep mulch with all manner or organic material, we rake up leaves in the fall when the deciduous oaks and maple trees have dropped all their foliage and pile them on thick at the base of the grapes, the stinging nettle bed and the comfrey row. It's not that these plants needs this form of organic matter to do well, it's simply that they are the closet crop to where the leaves fall. Raking them over to these beds makes more sense then raking them up and utilizing them in a row or bed further away. Deep mulch is a big help in keeping weeds down, which makes it that much easier to keep 'no till' beds and rows.
Mostly we use straw for our deep mulch, and it's usually infused with animal manure. The coops, barns and hutches all have a 2"-4" thick layer of straw in them. Goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits leave their waste in the straw which we clean out as needed, piling the manure infused straw in fields and under trees until it's needed. Straw by itself improves soil, encourages worms to migrate to the soil and supports mycorrhizae, which you can read about here. Add an animals manure, urine and hair to the straw and you have a powerhouse of weed suppressing nutrient source that will add to the soil and the plant growth of whatever you've planted in that bed.
The manure infused straw that we have in abundance every month of the year comes from the rabbit hutches. which you can read about here. The rabbit hutches are cleaned out every couple of days, while the goat barn is cleaned out every 4-6 weeks. Rabbits and goats produce a 'cold manure' meaning it doesn't need to compost before you can utilize it, so any manure infused straw coming from their barns and hutches can be used any day of any week. The chickens, ducks and quail all produce a 'hot' manure that does require composting before using it. When their coops are cleaned out, all the manure infused straw goes to a specific compost pile to compost down before being added to the soil as a fertilizer.
Most of the deep mulching is done in the fall just before or after the rains start, that's when the weeds and grasses start to grow back after the long, hot and dry summer months. Depending on how much rain we get in the winter, we may mulch a second time in December or January, and then the final mulching usually happens in the early spring when things warm up. The mulch we put down in the fall month has settled and is well on its way to being broken down, when the day time temperatures start to warm up in March and April, many of the grasses and weeds are once again shooting up past the older mulch. Another thick layer of manure infused straw is added to the row to continue to suppress the weed growth, as well as add to the overall health of the soil.
Another thing we do is to utilize our heavy, brown paper feed sacks. There isn't a bit of unwanted material on the feed sacks we buy, it's all earth friendly brown paper with a bit of cotton string that holds the bags closed. To help with weed suppression we'll lay the feed sacks down over the weed and grass growth before piling the manure infused straw on top. The brown paper attracts worms, supports mycorrhizae, does a great job at suppressing weeds and will decompose to add to the soil.
We have found over the years that the easiest way to keep the soil healthy, with the minimal amount of work and expense, is to keep livestock that produce wanted food for our consumption as well as manure for our fields and garden. The best way we've found to utilize that manure is to collect it in straw the animals have lived on and use that straw as a mulch.
