When you can’t get enough wood chips or other mulch for your garden, don’t worry. There are other ways to get mulch.

1. You can grow a cover crop. This last winter we used rye and clover as a cover crop and are now using it to mulch garden beds. You can chop and drop it in place, or you can chop it and carry it to your beds. Empty spaces can be pressed into service to grow mulch. In the summer, you can switch species, growing millet or sudangrass-sorghum hybrids, or peanuts or whatever doesn’t mind the heat.

2. You can grow perennial mulch plants, such as comfrey, Tithonia diversifolia, nitrogen-fixing trees and more. These stay where you put them and can be cut again and again for years.

3. You can simply let nature make mulch for you, and go out to the woods and gather leaves. We did this with our cabbages this year, mulching them with a mix of pine needles and oak leaves.