Mulching Flower Beds

Apr 14th, 2009 by tommy

Mulching flower beds, or any garden area, provides several benefits. The two main effects are moisture retention and weed suppression. Mulch helps to conserve moisture in your soil by keeping it covered and cool. Mulch also helps keeps weeds down in your flower beds. The two main drivers of weed growth are moisture and sunlight. Although mulching flower beds does help to retain moisture, it also prevents light from reaching the young weed seedlings as they germinate.

Mulching materials

Several materials are available for mulching flower beds. They range from the inorganic forms such as weed barriers and plastics to the organic types like cottonseed hulls and wood chips. Around our home we prefer to use wood chips. The main reason we mulch our flower beds with chips is simply because they are extremely cheap. You may have priced wood chip or bark mulch in bags at your local garden center and be thinking that I am crazy. But, that is not where we buy ours.

Mulch source

Our local landfill offers a service that has become increasingly popular throughout the country. They take all the green waste (trees, shrubbery, grass clippings, etc.) that anyone wants to recycle and turn it into products available for purchase. They offer compost and wood chips of various grades. The “premium” grade wood chips are priced at only $10 per cubic yard. I own a little Mazda pickup and one yard fills the entire bed and is rounded at the top. We mulch flower beds around our house at a depth of 3-4 inches. So, for $10 we can cover an area approximately 108 square feet in size and it makes the flower beds look great.

Mulching flower beds provides many benefits to help your flowers and shrubs grow happily. Check with your local landfill and see if they offer a green waste facility and you too could be mulching for less.

Happy Gardening!