Now.

Now, yes. I also mulch whenever I can go haul it or when I shred leaves in fall.
This year it was dry and my husband went away...lol..so I took the van to haul horse manure...twice... in his absence. I have spread about 100 5-gallon buckets of horse manure and bedding... :-D happy like a pig wallowing in..... :-P
I am good for the season.

Ditto. I've been cleaning and mulching beds for the last three weeks when time permits. Hope to get the task done by the end of April. Early year for me since we can't usually work in the gardens until the end of April but the weather has been wonderful!

I mulch.. whenever the tree guy brings me free mulch..

now.. later.. tomorrow.. fall.. middle of winter...

WHENEVER IT IS AVAILABLE .. you can lay it down ...

if you want to avoid cleaning weeds all summer.. what they said.. NOW ...

ken

I agree.. Now is a great time.

It is for several reasons.

You can see plants that are emerging and not totally smother them. The plants are usually still small so you can navigate around them. Spring rains will help settle in the mulch ect.

I mulch close to plants, not right up to them. After the first rain it usually pushes the mulch closer, but I just leave it. I would lightly mulch over your summer bulbs if they have not set up shoots yet, otherwise I would fill in around them.

My trick, is to lay newspaper down under first to help smother the small weed seedlings and then mulch on top of that 1-3". The newspaper will disolve by next season and keep the small weeds at bay.

Best of luck, and congrats on your new home :)

Keriann~

I agree with Ken.

I normally mulch in fall, because that's when leaves are available, which is my mulch of choice. I keep a couple bags of leaves over the winter and spread around if/where needed in the spring/summer - it's all good :0)

Thanks everyone! another question- if I only have a few of the flowers emerging...if I mulch how thick of a layer should i place over the bulbs that haven't popped through the surface yet?

I always wait to the beginning of July when all the spring bulb foilage is dying to mulch.

I don't mulch. In fact, I've scraped it off all the gardens where I had used it. I prefer the look of dirt/compost. I add fresh compost every spring and fall. The mulch always looked great when I first put it down, but it soon faded, looked tired, got mixed in with dirt as I moved things. And it needs to be removed and replaced every year or say anyway. With compost you just add more.

Be sure to get rid of all your weeds before you mulch. If the ground is dry, you can put a sprinkler on it for a couple of hours to soften it up if you plan to pull them. Or, you could get some Roundup, spray them, wait a couple of days for them to start to die off, then mulch.

"And it needs to be removed and replaced every year or say anyway"
Why remove and replace your mulch? That's too much work. You'll also defeat the purpose of mulch decomposing and becoming compost. I just mulch over the existing mulch.

Oh, no, I don't spray with any herbicide. You'll never know what it will do to your soil. I only use Roundup to paint bindweeds. That's it.

I would mulch 1" over your bulbs that have not emerged yet.

That is 1" dry. When you get it wet it should settle to 1/2-3/4 inches.

Keriann~

"Needs to be removed every year or so"!!!! Why?

Newbie question. Where can I buy compost? Live in the suburbs and the big box stores don't seem to have it.

Lowes and Walmart, among others almost always have bagged compost.
Tammy

I got tons of compost for free from my county's utilities dept...and I know a lot of tons have free compost or cheap compost at the recycling centers

I would see if you have a mushroom farm around.

They sell very reasonable priced, great compost.

Mine down here sells a cub. yard for $3.

Keriann~

I don't blanket-spray with Roundup either. I usually just direct a few drops on weeds' leaves that I know I'm going to have a devil of a time getting out. Should have explained that.

"Needs to be removed every year or so"!!!! Why?

Because it doesn't look great after a year, and it doesn't break down fast enough to just keep piling fresh on top. Mulch doesn't amend the soil the way compost does. In fact, I thought mulch actually leached nutrients from the soil? But to me, the biggest argument against mulch is that it needs to be scraped away before I can move plants.

Feeding mulches (i.e. finely shredded organic material instead of things like huge hunks of pine bark) largely break down within a season or so (depending on how hot/humid the climate is) and can easily be worked into the soil during planting, acting as a beneficial amendment.

The mistake commonly made with mulch is piling it onto cold, damp soil in early spring. The process of spreading it at this time of year compacts soil, the insulation delays soil warming and growth, and too thick a layer plus heavy spring rains can result in smothering and rotting of emerging perennials.

I delay mulching until things are up and growing vigorously, and the soil has dried out enough so I can walk around without leaving giant squishy footprints.

My gardens generally overwinter with a blanket of leaves. The leaves fall into the gardens in Autumn anyway so I just leave them. In Spring I cut down remaining foliage of perennials and grasses and remove some of the leaves. I'll rake back the leaves where I want seeds to sprout or where I'll plant seedlings.

I do a little weeding and a lot of transplanting and dividing in Spring too, so I usually wait to spread more mulch until after the plants are set. I use mostly compost, shredded leaves, leaves, or aged wood chips as mulches. Also it's good to mulch after a nice soaking rain, because the mulch will help conserve the moisture in the ground.

When I was saying I don't like "mulch" I was referring to cedar or hemlock mulch, not shredded leaves. I wish there was a source of those long pine needles people have down south, I think that looks very nice. Shredded up hemlock just doesn't look natural to me.

I wanted to add...
If you have weeds growing now, you should NOT rely on the mulch to control the ones that are already up. Remove/kill them BEFORE putting mulch down.

Also, be aware that mulch will NOT keep weeds away... more like reduce the numbers you might have had if you had bare soil.

I've got all my mulching done for this year - about a week ago. My main motivation for getting all the mulching done first thing each spring (once the ground has thawed, and not too wet) is I want to do it before the mosquitoes and black flies come out. : P