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Much about mulch
Mulch suppresses weeds, keeps the soil moist, moderates soil temperature in hot and cold seasons and encourages earthworms. It does all these things and dresses up the place, too. My favorite mulch comes from my compost pile. It includes tea and coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, leaves, grass clippings, weeds (without seeds), inner rolls from toilet paper and paper towels, corn cobs, dryer lint and non-woody trimmings from garden plants. The compost pile is the optimum final resting place for the cucumbers, lettuce and peppers that melt down in the produce drawer of my refrigerator. I top dress my favorite plants with a couple of inches of this every fall. It adds humus to the soil more quickly than other mulches because it has already broken down over the summer. Shredded leaves can be applied deeply around plants. Oak leaves are especially beneficial because they curl up as they dry out and don't mat down. I like to cover my spring bulbs heavily with mulch - at least those whose location I can remember. Mulch keeps the soil cooler in spring and keeps the bulbs from coming up too early and getting frozen back. Newspaper, spread thickly, will suppress weeds. It is, of course, the ugly duckling of mulches and must be covered with something more attractive, like pine straw or wheat straw. I fill a wheel barrow with water and wet the paper which makes it much easier to lay about where I want it. Shredded wood or bark chips are attractive, but weeds and grass will come up through even a deep layer of big chips. Anything but the smaller chips will float about in a heavy rain, giving you a clean-up job you hadn't planned. Add some high nitrogen fertilizer when you put down wood chips because the process of decomposition uses up the nitrogen that is present. A compost pile doesn't require much tending. Time does most of the work for you. You will need to turn it once a month or so to give the microorganisms who are working for you there some oxygen. Keep it moist. You can buy plastic compost bins, which work well. My best solution over the years for a compost bin has been a circle of hog wire. When it is time to turn the contents simply pull off the wire, move it over and transfer the contents to the new location. What you will eventually have is a sweet-smelling, dark, soil-like material that is the best thing that can happen to your flower beds.
I wish I had been the person who said, "What grows in the yard, stays in the yard." I wasn't, but that is what happens in my garden.
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