Remove or Keep Mulch on Flower Beds

Do you take the old mulch off your flower or perennial beds or do you keep it on and put new over the old in the spring of the year?

Or do you keep the old on and put new on in the fall of the year?

GoldenEagle,

As a rule--old mulch should be removed if you can and if it is practical. If it is like pine bark small nuggets or a finely shredded mulch of some kind, you could dig it into the bed in the Spring and let it decompose adding organic matter to the soil. Then apply 2" of fresh mulch. Please remember to keep any mulch away from the plant and flower stems.

All kinds of insects, their eggs and larva, fungus spores, etc. can hide in a layer of mulch to rear their heads the following year and create disease and extra insect problems.

Around Roses--it is a must, as they can have a lot of Black Spot fungus hiding in the fallen leaves in the mulch. Rose beds should be cleaned up and raked free of all fallen leaves from the year before. When you apply dormant oil (or Lime Sulphur) to them in late winter, make sure you spray the soil around them as well.

OK! That is just my 2cents worth......

Gita

I like to keep the mulch that is wood chips ( FINE) on the bed to decompose and add organic matter to the soil because in a perennial bed you cannot till in it without tearing the plants out.

My thinking is to spray with a insecticide to kill any bugs and eggs that may be hiding over Winter.

I understand what you are saying about Roses, they are very touchy and you want them to look at their best at all times.

I never really thought about it. We've always just left our mulch to decompose.
We use leaves/straw and other natural things.

Mother Nature drops her mulch where it grew. Then she blows it around a bit so there is a mix of different leaves. Trees fall and take years to break down. Ground wood mulch has been in place for over thirty five years where I now live on all flower and foundation planting beds. I simply add more from time to time and I let all plant tops fall and decompose where they grew. One exception. If I have an occasional disease situation I then clean up and compost the new leaves and old mulch in that area only. I return new mulch in the form of ground wood keeping it about three inches deep. My mulch cover two inches deep takes about six or seven cubic yards to add new. We have a lot of beds in permanent mulch. I rarely add any fertilizer of any kind to these beds.

Against all the rules of man I even mulch my iris but with only an inch over the crowns.

I usually add hardwood mulch on alternate years, raking through the old much to refresh it a little on the years we don't spread any. This year we bought a lot, spread it deep right up to the daylilies, iris, hosta, and astilbe. The leaves on those perennials look awful this year and I have seen areas in the mulch of what appears to be a powdery fungal substance. We've had heavy rains a couple of times with very dry weather in between rains and I'm not sure whether to remove all the mulch (arrggghh!!!) or just remove it around the perennials and give them a good shot of fungicide this fall and again in the Spring. The mulch seems to be forming a thick, impenetrable crust and I'm wondering whether the rain can even penetrate it. I'm almost looking forward to a frost so that I can trim back the perennials and wait for Spring. Any ideas for this Michigan gardener?

This message was edited Sep 5, 2008 1:09 PM

Has anyone tried the mulch made from recycled rubber tires? I am thinking that it would keep me from having to mulch every year. Right now I mulch about every other year with red wood chips and just let the mulch sink into the soil.

Your wood chips add many benefits including trace minerals mined by the trees that yeilded the mulch. Synthetic ground covers give nothing back to the soil. Mixed leaves have about the same food value as cow manure. A little less but non the less used consistantly they return to the soil more than the plants require. A combination of manures, trace minerals, leaves and cover crop is a very good soil builder program. A little black strap molasses delivered in water helps the manures and leaves decompose by firing up the micro biology herd to take on the chore.

sewngo....

Too much mulch can really do any kind of flowers and plants in! 2" is the recommended depth for mulches around plants--AND--you should always keep the mulch away from the stem of ANY plants as it will cause problems--like the Fungus you are mentioning.

You already found that out---that old mulch will form a "thick, impenetrable crust" around your plants. BAD!!! All water and rain and nutrients will never penetrate that--cannot be absorbed--just run off. It may work around bigger shrubs and trees--but NOT around flowers and perennials in your Garden.
I agree with doc that a more organic-type of a mulch would work better....PLUS--add nutrients to your soil every year.

I do not have a big garden. I am in a development and have been here for 39 years. My garden consists of edged beds everywhere----nothing "free-style".....I so envy all the people that have these woodsy expanses--acres!-- and they can just plant this and that anywhere they choose and let it all roam!
Besides--I have 2 HUGE Maples in my small back yard that I planted when we first moved in here. We all wanted instant shade!!! Maples filled the bill.....Now I curse all the roots all over my Lawn and into all my beds. Sometimes I wonder how anything grows here as it does?????

Anyway----I REALLY am environmentally conscious and try to do all the right things without being "obsessive compulsive" about it

In the Fall--I rake up leaves at least 3 times. Not just mine--but all the other ones that blow around from all my neighbors too. This would include Oak leaves---Tulip tree leaves--and a few other tree leaves I cannot ID at the moment. I rake and rake them--all into big piles and then use my Toro shredder vac to suck all the leaves up. I empty them into trash bags and (maybe?) add a hand-full of lawn fertilizer to it (for the Nitrogen) and also a bit of water before I tie them shut and put them at the back of my yard under the tall evergreens there--kind of out of sight. Don't get to them every Spring--but when i do--it is like "garden gold".....All mushy and decomposed......

I try to dig them into all my beds that I can even get my shovel into (the roots--you know....) and it is GONE before Summer ever rears her head. GREAT amendment to the soil!

What can I tell you? You should get rid of most of the old mulch and throw it somewhere else--like around your shrubs and trees--maybe? NOT your flowers and perennials!!!!! NOPE!
Then put down a thin layer of fresh mulch--preferably something organic that will decompose in one year. Forget the rubber mulch!!!! That is for Playgrounds! AND--NEVER! NEVER use the Chipper Shredder bits from fresh-cut down trees from those machines that shred all the tree branches. OH! It may be FREE--but it has not yet decomposed and will rob all your beds of Nitrogen in the process--IF you spread it around your landscape plants.

"To be informed--is to be forewarned"! Keep reading DG!

Gita

I lost some plants to mulch--the softer rosette type ones (name has left the mind for the night)
I picked up some of the ground tire stuff at the Garden Expo..the odor was Awful. I cannot imagine a lot of it in heat, unless the vapors go quickly. It was also quite expensive-but the smell was the thumbs down for me.
I do the rake leaves, mow or use vacuum to shred and put over the beds very late. I use left over branches from local tree sellers to mulch my little sedum beds as have lost so many to rot.
Wood mulch around the evergreen bushes, just as window dressing.

More passed on old wives tales about mulch is appearing. No mulch that lays on the soil will steal nitrogen from your plants. No mulch that is not heaped up over an inch or so directly over the plant will cause any problem. That certainly would have to exclude the possiblity of picking up harsh chemicals including herbicides in collected lawn grass or roadside waste from sprayed areas. Composting certainly does deliver a product that is decomposed but that decomposition will take place anywhere in time right where the dead materal hits the earth. Unfortunately Mother Nature does not have the ability to move compost about as is neccessary when piles of it are created. The extra work to hurry up the process is a choice of man perhaps hoping to improve messed up soil at the hands of man. Mother Nature uses the no till permanent mulch in all lands that man will leave his hands off of. Mother knows best.

No amount of management will overcome root masses that rob the soil to grow a tree. If we want to garden in such places we need the soil relatively free of encroaching roots and as important the shade of the tree. The leaves of the tree will return just enough leaves to grow a heathy tree if there is enough undercover growth to hold the leaves where they fell. If they blow about a bit they will help the soil they settle on and the tree will go to sleep hungry and in time show up with problems. My beautiful sugar maple stopped yeilding spring flow sap when my neighbor destroyed or took away about a third of the root zone for his driveway. That was his right but the tree has been unable to produce excess sap for the forty years following. Most of us create our growing beds up close to a house where the soil has been murdered or often just beond the shrub lines where the roots have to compete. To move three feet further away from a shrub line is all the fixing most flower plants need instead of what you and I try to fix up. This will not hold true for soil that has be redesigned by bull dozers and not built back up by getting the organic content back on or in the soil.

Permanent mulch has been with us since time began. The composting takes place in that small zone between the existing soil and the new fallen mulch no matter how thick it may be in a natural catch and hold zone. The more one disturbs that very narrow compost zone the less effective it can be. This is the whole purpose of no till in addition to eliminating damage through the whole root zone that is created by stirring it up by any method. The whole root zone goes many feet into the soil below the top six most of us call our growing zone.

Our writers and coaches often do not know what good soil is and how it is created and maintained. We who read such writings often just get a little further from the truths with each article we read. The simple facts are that the only way we can build and improve the soil is to eliminate any product or practice that kills the soil biology. That part of the reasoning is pure black and white.....of no question. We have choices. We can continue doing dumb and fruitless practices or we can begin to understand that for years we have been feed by the cash flow support of those who produce the harsh chemicals and one by one get back to relative simple basis that will enable the soil to heal.

A permanent no till mulch works fine used with a little common sense. Soil improves under them but faces errosion and other difficulty more so in winter than any other time if the mulch is removed. Mulch of wood chips simple remains mulch longer and there fore reduces hard muscle work to pick it up and move it let alone turn around and replace it with fresh that has to be there for a significant time to re-establish the natural composing zone. As stated earlier my beds have been under permanent wood chip and bark mulch for more than thiry five year. All of the plants are the original plants put there with the exception of a few that just quit sometimes because I personally damaged one.......one way or another.

This message was edited Sep 6, 2008 7:11 AM