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Over the years I've tried various kinds of mulch on my flower beds. One year I used cocoa hulls which gave the whole yard a heavenly chocolate fragrance. After a while, however, a thick white fungus formed on the hulls and it looked like it had snowed in July! I found it kind of pretty and fascinating, my family was not impressed. This was a natural way that cocoa hulls break down, but not so great in your front yard.
We live in the country and the county is happy to dump the bits of ground up tree branches, etc. that they prune along the roadsides. One year I asked for some and came home a few days later to find a mountain of mulch covering my front lawn! It took me all summer to haul it to my various flower beds and even the vegetable garden. I never did use all of it and we had a dead spot on our lawn for a year afterward. Also, there were carpenter ants in that load! Not to mention several other creepy crawlers that may be beneficial to my garden but not my nervous system.
Then I tried "Cypress" mulch sold in bags nearly everywhere in Michigan in the spring, usually from bags piled up at gas stations. I did not like the smell. Plus, this mulch was driven to Michigan from the south and I was uneasy about what they might be selling me along with the cypress, like more fungus or insects that I did not want or need.
Finally, I decided to spend the extra money and purchase cedar mulch and it is wonderful. It is an easily renewable resource and has a wonderful scent. It builds up the nutrients in the soil as it breaks down. But best of all, just like a cedar storage closet or cedar chest, it repels insects!
I have far fewer issues with slugs (who don’t like to crawl over it) and other garden pests. Beneficial critters, like earthworms thrive under it as they are harder for predators to detect.
Cedar mulch is great for starting a new flower bed or expanding an established one. In the fall, I place a layer of eight sheets of newspaper over the surface you’d like to convert (from lawn, etc) Next, top it with four inches of cedar mulch. By spring the soil is ready to till and no weeds or lawn to dig out.
Cedar mulch is finely ground up and shredded. Cedar bark (or chips) are large pieces about an inch or two square. Bark is great for making paths in your yard, use the newspaper/bark method there as well. You can use it as mulch too, but the “mulched’ cedar seems to work better for me
You can have a landscape supply place deliver several yards to your home. A ’yard’ is a 3x3x3 foot piles or ’square’. Some supply places dump it where you tell them, but sometimes it ends up filling your driveway, so be specific about where you want it.
I’m a lazy gardener so buy the cedar mulch and bark in bags and buy only a few at a time so I can apply them as I need them. I’ve learned that one bag covers a path equal to the length of the bag, so I lay down the newspaper, slit the end of the bag and just dump it out.
Cedar mulch (and bark) is wonderful stuff for your garden. It costs a little more, but is well worth it!
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Author Bio Box: Pat Merewether
Experience
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