Great reminder for this time of the year. I have already started on the front yard with hemlock mulch. Everything always looks so nice after your finished. : )

I also use hemlock. Looks so good around the plants, I do not fertilize so I like the finer mulch that decomposes and attracts worms. I usually add mulch whenever I weed, anytime of the year. I have a very mild climate so don't have to worry about too much heat. I also use the hemlock mulch as top dress in my potted plants, helps hold the moisture and holds down weeds.

Great article, thanks.
Rebecca

Our leaves are starting to fall now, so can make some nice rich compost with that for the spring. I generally mulch once "major" in the spring and will add compost before that, and again as needed throughout the summer. We don't have hemlock mulch around here but it sounds nice.

It is a wonderful mulch Chris. Nice and fluffy and decomposed nicely.

Two words: mulch rules!

Great article Chris! We buy mulch from a local company every spring and have it delivered by dump truck in 3 yard quantities, their minimum for delivery. Three yards is a big pile of mulch and it's sometimes a pain having to shovel it from the huge pile into wheelbarrows to move about the garden for spreading ... but I can't imagine not using mulch. When HD has bark mulch on sale during the year I will buy a few bags of that too ... if the bags are dry they are fairly easy to lift and move to where you want to dump them. We have friends with lots of live oak trees and they bag the leaves and put them out on the curb for yard trash pick up ... so I get lots of free oak leaf mulch when I want it too. I miss having pine trees ... the Azalea's and Gardenia's loved the acid from pine mulch.

GREAT article Chris! LOVE LOVE LOVE mulch!

Thanks Lin & Vic! I go pick up my own mulch by the trailer load, then I can park the trailer close to where I'll be using it.

Mulch has to be a gardener's best friend!

That's for sure!

My entire yard (both front & back) is mulch. I've found that it saves not only water, but plants! And boy do I have wormies all OVER the place now!! Can't dig down w/o seeing a gazillion wormies everywhere! Love it!

Isn't it wonderful!

Chris - Yea, but the only thing that this article doesn't mention is that the biodegradable mulch decays, so it has to be replaced/refreshed. I'm having to do that this spring and am not looking forward to doing that. I'll need an estimated .. 40? cubic yards of mulch to do my entire yard again.. 15 cubic yards in the front yard, 25 in the back? I got super lucky a few years ago.. a tree trimming/landscaping company had a load of western cedar that they couldn't use, so was willing to dump it for free if I paid the truck fee. So I got approx. 14 CY of cedar for $80!! That's less than the cost of 2 CY at the landscaping place!! Bad thing was then I had to move it off my driveway onto the yard.. bucket by bucket.. what a MESS! Took me FOREVER!

It definitely is a lot of work to mulch. I buy it by the trailer-load and can drive the trailer pretty close to where I need it, except in the backyard. Wow, $80 was a super deal!

Here's a picture of the front yard about a year after I did the initial mulch job.. This had about.. 8? CY of mulch on it from that load as I had just gotten 4 CY from a different company a few weeks before that awesome deal came through..

Wow, gorgeous roses!!!! That is a large area to mulch, but it looks so nice! I wish my entire yard was garden.

Chris - It's ridiculous now.. that's when I had only about 75-80 roses in the front. Now I have over 130. Don't have a decent pic showing them all from last year, though. Here's part of the back yard.. it's a work in progress, so please ignore the mess! This has over 20CY of mulch on it.

Beautiful Toni!