Well some of you may have read my tomato tips. One of the tips is to use Alfalfa Hay as a mulch which I still standby with a caveat that needs an explanation.

One of my old customers wrote me today ragging on me the Alfalfa Hay burned up his tomato plants . This had me scratching my head in disbelief. I know this man well and he does not make things up and has full trust in me. So I called him back to get more details to try to figure things out.

What he told me is about 5 days ago he started using alfalfa as mulch and had about a 3 inch blanket of it built up already. Then yesterday afternoon all his plant were laying flat, dead, and severely wilted. He went on to say when he went to dig them up and pulled back the alfalfa mulch is was like wet, packed like clay, and VERY HOT. So I asked him how in the hell did he get it packed so tightly? That was the right question because the answer revealed the problem.

What He had done is went to the coop to buy a bail of alfalfa hay, but they did not have traditional bails. They had a dehydrated alfalfa hay some like to feed horses with because it does not have mold and other fungal problems which interfere with horses digestive system. It is a good feed product but it is ground up pretty fine and highly packed together. What happened is the alfalfa after to 5 days started to cook into compost and literally cooked the tomato plants.

Anyway I thought I would share that with you, use regular alfalfa bailed hay or pasture hay. DO NOT USE DEHYDRATED hay or pack it down.