The only things I'm not mulching right now are the very small seedlings (carrots at the moment) and the lettuce because I planted the seeds too close together. Once I start picking the lettuce and thinning it out, I'll probably put down some mulch. It might depend on your needs to some extent, but with my excessively well-draining soil and high winds I don't have a choice. The top few inches of the soil just dries out way too fast.

As far as putting down mulch when you sow the seed, I was able to do that with peas and they grew through it no problem. I only used a very thin layer of mulch, though. You probably don't want to pile several inches of it on top of them. You can either water directly through the mulch or use drip irrigation or soaker hoses underneath it.

There are also plants that like warm soil like tomatoes that I don't think you're supposed to mulch at first because it keeps the soil too cool. I don't have a lot of experience with that yet. The cool season crops and perennials aren't minding it at all, though.

I have a moisture problem, I don't mulch till the soil has warmed and dries some. I have used my mulch as amendments for the past 6 years. I am hoping to shift from that and just rake the mulch back to plant, if I can do that waits to be seen. When we start getting warm sunshine and wind my soil will dry very fast. that is when I put down the irrigation tubes and mulch. The tubes will be right next to the plant and not be covered so I can see the water coming out the holes that are on top of the tube. The mulch will be much deeper out 2 or 3 inches from the plant.

I have never used pine of any kind as mulch so I cant comment on that. I have used hay, grass and leaves, all of which worked well. Paper covered with something to keep it from blowing a way works also. I was not happy when I tried mulching with compost, it seemed to dry too fast and I felt it was better used in a different manor.

Larry

I mulch each bed on an as-needed basis, and when and how I mulch and how heavily I put the mulch on the bed will vary with each crop. Each crop I grow has its own needs. Some need warm soil, some need cooler soil, but all need increasing levels of mulch as the soil continues to warm up over the coming weeks and months.

Cool-season crops need mulch early in the season to keep their soil from warming up too much. Warm-season crops don't need as much mulch early in the season because I want their soil to warm up to the level they prefer. However, they get heavier mulch applied as time goes on. By the time the true heat sets in around early June, the warm season crops will have 4 to 6" of mulch on their beds.

I usually mulch after seedlings are up and growing, or after transplants have been put into the ground. You can mulch any time though, and with bare soil, the sooner you mulch the better or you'll have a million weeds sprouting. If you mulch before you sow seeds, or immediately after, just put the mulch very thin in the area where the seeds are so that they don't have to fight their way through it. Big seeds like corn, beans, peas, southern peas, squash, etc. will sprout easily and push up through the mulch. Tiny seeds like lettuce and carrots can struggle with heavy mulch, so sow them in bare ground or with only the thinnest layer of mulch.

Water passes through the mulch just fine, so you can water from above if you choose. Whether to put your soaker hoses or drip irrigation lines under the mulch is a personal choice. I like to put them on top so I can see them and tell if an emitter is clogged. If I put the drip lines or soaker hoses underneath the mulch, I don't know if an emitter is clogged until a plant or plants start showing moisture stress. Also, since I am in a really rural area with lots of native wildlife, I often have snakes get into my garden. The last thing I want to do is stick my hand up under the mulch to find a dripline to check an emitter and discover a venomous snakes is under that mulch too. I keep my hands up out of the mulch during snake season. That won't be an issue for many of you since you're in more civilized areas.

If you hand water with a hose, remember to keep the moisture off the leaves of your plants. Moisture on foliage contributes greatly to foliage disease like early blight on tomatoes, potatoes and peppers, rust on beans, powdery mildew on peas, etc. so keeping moisture off the foliage is a big help. Rain and water from a hose drip down through the mulch to the soil just fine. It sounds like you are concerned the mulch is an impediment to good soil moisture, but it is the opposite. Mulch helps retain the moisture that is in the soil, and the water percolates just fine down through the mulch to reach the soil.

When is it time to mulch? As soon as possible because every day your ground sits there with no mulch at all, the weed seeds are getting light and sprouting.

You can use anything for mulch. I normally use chopped and shredded autumn leaves, grass clippings and old, spoiled hay given to me by ranching neighbors who do not spray their native pasture land with any herbicides. If I have to buy hay, I only buy alfalfa hay because it is a legume and cannot be sprayed with the class of persistent herbicides responsible for compost, manure and garden contamination in the last decade or decade and a half. Straw is fine because it usually is not sprayed with herbicides.

You can use pine bark fines, often sold labeled as soil conditioner, and any bark mulch with small pieces. Avoid the large pieces because they'll wash out and float away in heavy rainfall. Avoid the use of dyed mulches in areas that produce edible crops.

Mulching is the best thing you can do for your soil. Mulched ground can stay 20 or more degrees cooler in hot weather than bare soil. Mulch decomposes (and rather quickly in our climate in all but the driest of years) and enriches the soil. If you do nothing but mulch, you'll still be enriching your soil every year just by applying the mulch.

I like to put layers of something underneath the mulch. I've used newspapers (multiple sheets), cardboard and landscape fabric. Each has its use in different beds. I'd never use landscape fabric with carrots, for example, but it is great in rows of tomatoes and peppers and anywhere else you really need to reduce soil splash because soil splash spreads disease. I also use landscape fabric in all my pathways to reduce weeds and soil splash, and I put 6 to 8" of hay on top of that fabric. Weeds will sprout in mulch and grow down through landscape fabric, newspaper and cardboard, so using them doesn't mean you don't weed---it just means you weed a whole lot less.

For someone who gardens on land with any slope at all, mulch will help prevent erosion too. In our climate where it is not uncommon to occasionally get several inches of rain in one day, sometimes in only a couple of hours, we need to protect our garden soil from erosion too.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Larry is down in the Ark River Valley almost straight south of me, which explains why I do things very much like he does. I have heavy clay soil in a part of the state that usually gets heavy spring rains, so don't mulch until the soil dries and warms some. Then we lay soaker hoses and mulch over them with last fall's shredded leaves. This is in the veggie garden. For perrenials we mulch with the wood chips that the power co. blessed us with a couple years ago. This is mostly hardwood with a bit of pine mixed in. Before we got the chips we bought pine bark in rather large chunks for the perrenial beds. We don't mulch with our compost either, but till it in.

When and how you mulch will depend on your variables, What kind of soil, how much rain, heat, wind, shade.

Wow, thanks for all the information everyone. I now feel like I can use mulch without fear. :)

Now I am going to go mulch the cool season crops. (that is the sound of me running out to the garden) LOL