Mulch

I just wanted to share my mulching experience of the past week. I've taken on the responsibility of maintaining the front of the cul-de-sac where I live. My side of the street is covered by a grand oak, but the other side is in full, Florida sunshine. So I thought it woud be nice to make a native plant display. Right now it's blanket flowers and a few echinaceas (and a bunch of seedlings). I needed mulch, and I felt like using cypress or pine would be contradictory to my cause. I tried to find that Florimulch in my area (the one that uses the invasive melaleuca trees) but I had no luck. One place said they used to carry it but had problems with it molding? (Anyone else have that problem?) I did some reading and it said that eucalyptus was a good alternative. The packaging said it was farm grown so I didn't worry I was starving koalas. In contrast, I noticed the cypress and pine mulch had wording on the packaging like "forest grown". Isn't that a bad thing? Do people see that and think they should buy it because of that? It got me really confused. While the eucalyptus was slightly more expensive, I have found a great reason to use it instead of cypress - it doesn't make me sneeze! I've had allergies since I was eight, and I'm allergic to most of the world. Three years of immunotherapy and two daily doses of Allegra make me mostly normal. But everytime I spread cypress mulch I erupt in sneezes. After I finished spreading the eucalyptus mulch, I was standing back admiring my work when I realized I hadn't sneezed once!

My whole experience impressed upon me the importance of not only planting and growing friendly plants, but making sure my whole gardening process is helping the environment. It seems like the melaleuca mulch is more available to the south of me. If anyone out there has used it, I'd love to hear your opinions on it.

I would think alot of mulches would get moldy in Florida humidity. But moldy isn't necessarily a bad thing? Is it? (And I think if you are in a spot with full sun, that would help minimize mold formation.)

I hadn't thought it about it before, but living in a climate without seasons would put a serious damper on my mulch habits. I use primarily shredded fall leaves for most of my mulch. Without the fall leaves, I would have mulch crisis.

You can get fall leaves even in warm climates if you plant deciduous trees--the fall color doesn't tend to be as pretty, but the leaves fall off regardless of temperature. We get accused of not having seasons here either, but I always have plenty of leaves to shred in the fall. It all depends on what you plant, obviously if it's all palm trees then you won't have any, but many deciduous trees do just fine in warm climates.

I put all my shredded stuff into the compost pile. That's one good thing about Florida - I never have to worry if my compost pile is hot enough and the stuff breaks down crazy fast. I think the constant humidity helps too. I've never had a problem with my mulch getting moldy, but I do have many tupes of mushrooms sprouting up all around the yard.

Can you get pine straw? It makes the best mulch to me.