Mulch application

So we finally started mulching the gardens for the year. It is great to do it this time of year for any number of reasons; favorites include not having to dodge bulbs, leaves, and flowers with the wheel barrow or the mulch. It's a great way to keep warm on chilly days, and really helps with the presentation of the winter garden.

We always do a walk through the garden to weed, pick up leaves, defoliate roses/hydrangea if necessary, and tidy anything else we find. I love the winter garden in it's structure and simplicity, and a layer of fine compost sets that off wonderfully.

If you wait too long, daffodils spattered with mulch are a pain to rinse off, and the edge of a wheelbarrow can shred certain leaves. It's also a whole lot quicker to toss mulch right on top of a hosta that hasn't come up yet than to get mulch around all sides of it!

Problems with mulching this time of year are few, but water-saturated lawns can be a big one. Running a wheelbarrow of heavy mulch over a lawn again and again will leave ruts in it. If it's dry no worry, wet is usually fine, but a fully-saturated lawn will get full of ruts, look really really bad, and cause a mower to bottom out!

The solution? Plywood! We use 5/8" plywood ripped into two foot by eight foot panels, with handles for easy carrying. The weight from the wheelbarrow is dispersed over the surface area of the plywood. After running two yards of compost over a row of these—on a lawn that moved underfoot—we were able to rake it out after we finished to near perfection.