IMO, the best mulch to use is what's cheap and locally abundant.

Mulch isn't intended to deliver nutrients, mulch is intended to smother weeds and to hold moisture in the soil.

Around here, the mulch of choice is pine straw. In many places wood chip mulch is available free from the local waste facility. Compost can be used as mulch if you have it in abundance. Straw is popular in areas where it is abundant and many people, including myself, have had tremendous success with shredded leaves -- especially when a "killer" mulch that can be tilled in at the end of the season is wanted.

Perhaps your local ag extension can put you in touch with a Master Gardener program where local experts can share their experience with the needs of your specific locality?

Shredded leaves. One major advantage of shredded leaves is they are free, available at no cost (except some labor) and are plentiful.
Why are you turning your mulch in in the spring or late summer, or even at all. I try to maintain a mulched soil year around, but the bacteria in my soil digest the shredded leaves I put down every year so it is mostly gone by mid August.

Where the heck do you get shredded leaves? I've never heard of that use with mulch beds...unless you get them in the fall?

The shredded hardwood whas what you'd expect shredded wood as well as shredded bark. Both of these componenets have varying degrees of nutrients and deliver as they decomposs.

I turn the mulch beds so the mulch doesn't crust over and compact. The is a pretty common problem with wood mulch in general...just didn't know if there was something out there that delivered a higher degree of organic matter and most importantly doesn't compact. For example, hemlock mulch or wood chips...which I have no experience with.

I have about 15 yards worth of mulch beds...so it needs to be an abundant source.

Yes, you get shredded leaves in the fall when leaves are abundant in your yard and your neighbors yards. Then you store them in piles until wanted.

The fluffiest mulch I know of is pine straw. But if its not locally sourced its either unavailable or very expensive.

I think part of your problem with finding a suitable mulch is that you're conflating several different concepts.

One adds organic material to the soil by tilling in cover crops, tilling in finished compost, or sheet composting raw materials.

One uses mulch to smother weeds (for which a certain degree of compaction is required), retain water, even the soil temperature by cooling it on summer afternoons and warming it on winter nights, and present an aesthetically pleasing appearance.

Some people, with certain soil and climate conditions, are able to use organic matter of the types normally worked into the ground in a sort of permanently renewed, sheet composting, mulch that never has to be tilled in. Straw, shredded leaves, grass clippings, and spoiled hay are commonly used for this purpose, especially by vegetable gardeners. But these materials usually fail to pass the aesthetics test for landscape plantings.

Wood and bark mulch are generally reserved for permanent beds of perennials that will rarely be disturbed. Its expected to compact to a certain degree and the irrigation is usually delivered under the mulch at the base of the plants rather than on top of it. Many gardeners will fluff wood mulch with a rake from time to time but its almost never tilled into the soil because its decay resistance means that chunks of wood remain undecomposed -- almost as annoying as rocks.

Improving soil fertility, rather than just the addition of organic material to improve soil texture and create a suitable environment for worms and beneficial soil bacteria, requires the addition of fertilizers, either chemical or "organic" -- mainly compost and/or manure.

There's no one "magic bullet" that can be spread on the surface and meet all the different soil needs a given gardener is likely to have.

If you need to improve your soil you need to rake the wood mulch off the beds and work in appropriate soil amendments and fertilizers then replace the mulch, possibly on top of an irrigation system, so it can do its job of smothering weeds, moderating the soil temperature, and conserving water. :-)

It is quite possible to combine the two functions - adding OM and providing an ongoing nutrient source together with providing the weed suppression, moisture retention and soil insulation characteristics of a standard mulch. I use a commercial compost for this purpose, made from recycled yard waste. It has a textural consistency similar to shredded bark and a rich, dark color. It is about a third less expensive than a bark mulch from the same supplier but doesn't last as long. Since I prefer to mulch twice a year, that really is not my primary concern :-) I've used this product for a good number of years and during this period, have found no need to add any supplemental fertilizers - the compost provides all the nutrients my garden needs. It does not appear to compact, absorbs and retains moisture nicely and since my garden is quite densely planted, weeds are not a big concern. After using this material for many years, my soil is very well draining, friable and fertile.

But the availability of any type of mulch product is very much dependant on location. We tend to have a lot of commercial composting operations in my area, so this is a plentiful and relatively economical choice. In other areas, pine straw, leaves, wood chips or bark may be cheaper and easier to readily obtain. But if given the choice, I'd go with any quality finished compost for a mulch, both for appearance and for what it adds to the garden.

I probably should have been more clear with what I have and what my main goals are:

- Typically need to reapply 10 - 15 yards of mulch every 2 years.
- Mulch is for trees, shrubs and perrenials
- My main goal is too get a mulch that doesn't decompose so quickly and doesn't compact...yes if you get SNOW, the mulch compacts and forms a crusted layer over the mulch if you don't turn it (it gets very clumpy).

I'm going to check with the village or the locat ext. office to see if there are other sources. Not sure if Pine Straw, Leaves or Compost are commercially available...remember 10 - 15 yards. No local nurseries carry that in the Milwaukee area.

@gardengal48,
Your compost sounds wonderful. Proof that competition in the market makes for good products.

We bought "compost" mixed 50-50 with "topsoil" for our raised beds and it turned out to be the exact, same, mineral-deficient sand we already had mixed with aged wood-chips (some of said "chips" were footlong chunks of 4 inch logs). And the piles at the other nursery are no better. I suspect that its the exact, same stuff that we could get as "mulch" for free at the dump -- just aged longer.

@whaas,
Good luck finding something. I hope the info has been helpful.

Do we prefer certain mulches?
Yes. I prefer almost any mulch to the commercial wood chip look. (Of course, a wood chip mulch is better than a stick in the eye.)

I like a nourishing mulch. I use seaweed, compost, leaf mold, and kimmsr's chipped leaves. I love the look of a hay mulch in a vegetable garden.

We have snow in Maine, but my mulches don't compact, as far as I know.

My last question is what quantities do you get these mulches? I can't imagine getting 15 yards of shredded leaves (wouldn't you be worried about leaf diseases?), seaweed, compost etc. being readily available or being cost effective.

By mulches compacting I mean the shreaded wood types.

I use 10-12cy twice a year. My supplier sells the compost for $27.25/cy if I pick up; bark is $39/cy. They will also deliver in quantities of 6cy or more but the price is higher due to delivery. Fortunately, they have soil yards close and I have a pickup, so I usually get it myself.

If you really want to get jazzy, you can have the mulch blown in.........HUGE timesaver but obviously more costly (almost double the pick up cost) and because my garden is so densely planted, I have to make sure nothing is buried or the mulch applied too deep or close to trunks, etc. I'd rather do it myself a pickup load at a time.

Getting leaves is not a problem in those areas of the world with trees. Before I retired I could load up my pickup every night on the way home and would have on hand 500 to 600 5 bushel bags of leaves each fall to shred to make compost and to shred to make mulch. Today that means making special trips in town, and towing a trailer since I now have a van, and that could be expensive unless I plan ahead and put the trailer on when I do go into town.
Way more people throw the leaves that fall from their trees away than recycle them on site, and many of these same people go to the garden center and buy peat moss to replace the leaves the threw away the previous fall. So they spend large amounts of time, energy, and money to get rid of a good source of renewable organic matter and then spend even mroe time, energy, and money on a pretty bad source of nonrenewable organic matter.

In my town people rake stuff to the road and the town brings out the sucker truck a couple times a month.

I'm intending to embarrass my DH by walking down the street with a pitchfork and the garden cart since we have more pines than deciduous trees. But he likes to eat the food from the garden and hates paying for the water so the leaves are NECESSARY.

Some of the close neighbors are willing to push their leaves over the property line onto my side so I can get them more conveniently.