The most exciting headline you'll read today: Advances in spray-on mulches

Science Daily: Agricultural Research Service (ARS) agricultural engineer Greg Holt helped develop the erosion control industry's first cotton hydromulch "spray-on blanket." Holt is at the ARS Cotton Production and Processing Research Unit in Lubbock, Texas.

Hydromulch is the bright-green mulch used in spray-on slurries that cover bare lands at construction sites and roadside projects, to prevent erosion until vegetation can be established. In the past, hydromulches were made mostly from wood and paper byproducts.

GeoSkin® Cotton Hydromulch is made from cotton gin byproducts. It is a combination hydromulch/spray-on erosion-control blanket that performs better than conventional roll-on blankets and requires significantly less labor. Holt and colleagues tested the prototype against commercial erosion control blankets made of straw, wood and coconut.

…One of Holt's studies showed that cotton-based hydromulches established a good stand of grass, compared to other hydromulches and a straw blanket which didn't do as well….

A generic mulch shot, by Mikereichold, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License