Most coconut mulches are coir-based.
In some organic gardening products, the husks, hair and coir of coconuts act as a mulch-like soil supplement, replacing the earth's rapidly depleting peat moss resources. Like peat, coconut mulch helps soil absorb water at a quicker rate. It also serves as a cheap, eco-friendly mulch alternative that reduces soil erosion and decreases watering needs around the garden. While coconut mulch comes with a lot of benefits, no gardening solution is completely perfect.
Gardening Drawbacks
Coir-based coconut mulch made from green coconuts has a high saline content due to the salt water used in its curing. Among individual sorts of coconut mulch, coir twine made of freshwater-cured mixed brown coir, lagoon-cured bristle coir or lagoon-cured mixed white core degrades more quickly than coconut mulch made of freshwater-cured bristle coir. As demand for coconut mulch increases, however, manufacturers discourage the saltwater curing process. Coconut mulch products may also cause a slight decrease in the nitrogen content of soil, but the difference is negligible in healthy soils with balanced organic matter contents.
Price
At 2010 prices, virtually every type of traditional mulch is less expensive than coconut mulch. Coconut mulch, which often comes in blocks or bricks, commonly sports retail price tags starting at about $20 and reaching up to nearly $30. By the brick, it comes at a price of about $7 while 2 cubic feet of ground-covering coconut shell-based mulch puts gardeners back about $8. In comparison mixed mulch, pine mulch and other wood-based products can be purchased for prices as low as $3 per bag. Thirty-pound bags of premium pecan-based mulch retail for about $5 to $8. The mid-range price for rubber mulch ranges from about $8 to $11 in 2010. As coconut mulch generally costs about three times as much as other mulches, it may put a strain on the wallets of budget-conscious green thumbs.
Availability
Coconut mulch is a much more recent gardening product than wood-based commercial mulches; bio-engineers first begin using coconut coir in soil erosion control experiments in the 1990s. As such, some gardeners -- especially those in small towns or rural areas -- may not find coconut-based gardening products as readily available at retail stores as other types of mulch. Though coconut mulch is readily available from online retailers, shipping and handling costs can effectively double the product's cost. Of course, composting or using leaves, pine needles, grass clippings or straw in place of coconut mulch is a readily available and low-to-no cost solution for most gardeners.
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