What Can We Use for Mulch if Few Leaves Available?

We want to try to prepare soil for next spring by adding compost, covering with newspaper, etc. It will be for a vegetable garden. We heard to pile leaves over the newspaper. Well, that is kind of a problem. One thing we enjoyed about living out in the boonies is that we never had to rake because the wind usually takes care of the leaves pretty quickly. Now we are seeing this is a problem because we are so wide open and the leaves from our few trees are spread over several acres and they do not dump all at once, so we only get a little here and there. We were hoping to purchase something instead. Is there something out there that would be a good mulch to put over the newspaper?

Thank you so much.

I'd just go to your local garden center, Home Depot, etc and pick out a mulch that you like the look of. They'll likely have a few different types of bark mulch, maybe some other things like pine needles depending on what's readily available in your area.

Thank you for your reply.

We visited our nearby nursery about a month ago and they had several kinds (I can only remember cedar specifically) and the employee could not recommend bark mulch for a vegetable garden as it doesn't break down very well. She was not the usual employee and seemed to tire of my questions. I did not get an answer for a suitable replacement, so I came here. :)

I am a novice about gardening, but I thought pine hindered the growth of other things. We can see this around the evergreens in our yard. Or is that a chemical or something in the bark rather than the needles?

I appreciate your help.

Bark mulch will be fine--it does break down over time. Not as fast as something like leaves, but it'll do a good job holding down the newspaper, holding in moisture, preventing weeds, etc. Mulches like leaves that break down faster won't do as good a job on the weed prevention, etc and you've got the compost and the newspaper that'll break down more quickly so I don't see any reason not to use bark mulch on the top.

Thank you so much for explaining that because it's the weeds we are having a terrible time with and want to kill that batch of whatever is growing now.

Got the same deal with the leaves so I use hay as recommended by Ruth Stout years ago. It's cheap & breaks down well.

Hello SoTX,
My computer was out of commission for a bit, so I only just now see this. Thanks for responding.

Hay! :D We have PLENTY of that, 21 bales at the moment, and excess that didn't get picked up. I always wondered if using that would cause troubles. What have you found? Did you end up with a lot of grass growing in your garden?

We have been so busy that have not yet picked up any mulch, but after this weekend when things calm down, we want to get to bedding our garden for the winter.

So, you've got the hay and are saving money before you start! Does a great job and no seed growth in mine. Plus, if you put it down thick, it will self-compost with moisture. Alfalfa, of course, is best but expensive here and anything will work, I bought two six foot round bales not cured right cheap & delivered for $10 each in January and still working on the first one. Round bales can be a royal pain to work with, but square bales go down in a flash.

My husbands family (9 kids) always had a large large vegetable garden and my father and mother in law were experts at it.
Besides always putting on leaves and tilling them in which you don't have and getting any of the neighboring farmers animal manure like a nearby sheep farm which was his for the coming and getting. He would plant Rye I think it was Rye grass in the fall after all the crops were harvested and the garden was tilled he would plant it to keep the good top soil from blowing away over winter and then in the spring he would till it up for a good mulchy fertilizer for that years crops.
I have to say their garden thrived and also everything that came from the garden and was scrap like cucumber peals or corn cobs any of the waste products after processing anything from the years crop was always put back into the garden by just digging a hole and burying it.
Don't know if this is anything that you didn't ever think about but just thought the Rye grass was something I never ever thought of.

Cover crops are great if you can get the timing right (I don't till ever). Cereal rye is excellent for adding organic matter and much bulk for mulch.