I think your arms will wear out before you get all the mulch moved if you use a 10L pail :) Lots of folks don't bother with wheelbarrows (dunno about Australia, but they cost more than a huge bed of fancy lily bulbs over here!). Use a heavy-duty plastic tarp, or a child's plastic sled, or even one of those hard-plastic kiddy wading pools. Attach a rope for pulling (I just looped a long piece of clothesline around the rim of a kiddy pool), and you will find quite a good amount of weight can be easily slid from the delivered pile to where ever you want it. I have wheelbarrow, carts, tarps, and small kiddypool; the 9'x12' (2.75m x 3.7m) tarp or pool meet 90% of my needs.

The daffies will grow up through a nice layer, I put about 8 to 10 cm of mulch over mine in the fall, which compresses to about 6 cm by spring. For self-sown flowers, you should decide what your primary desire is: mulching to prevent weeds requires about 6 cm, which is usually too thick for the flower seeds to sprout through. You can either save the flower seeds and plant directly into soil, or clear away the mulch in the fall so the flowers can self-sow onto the soil. If the latter, replace the mulch after the new seedlings are about 10 cm tall.

Meldy...it's spring in Australia now.
I move my mulch and compost in 5 gallon plastic buckets....which is, I suppose, the same as 10 L buckets.
May not be the easiest, but it works for me. That way I shovel the stuff into the buckets and can dump them on the garden and I only have to shovel the stuff once.
Shovel into buckets, dump the stuff on the garden, repeat.
Or shovel the stuff into a tarp or wheelbarrow, and then shovel again onto your gardens....?
I prefer shovel once! and carry lighter loads often.

Linda C

Hi, Lindac - yeah, I thought it was spring there. But I think it may be very, very early spring, possibly with the daffies just starting to show. How nice to be looking forward to the beginning of the growing season!

Since I have a leg that doesn't work well, I always look for the method that has the least repetitive walking. Anyhow, I think there would be a limit as to how far away one could dump from a bucket, and if the flower bed is 10 meters wide, that's close to 33 feet -- way too far to toss from a bucket (or from a shovel, for that matter). Although I can [and do] toss mulch using a pitchfork, but it starts to get really spread out and scattered if tossed much over 10 feet away. BTW, a 10L bucket is about 2.8 gallons, so -depending on what type of mulch- about 2 heaping shovelfuls. Personally, I'd rather get the bulk of the mulch close to the bed, and then spend my time putting it around the plants with care.

Before the truck arrives think about where it's going to go as an initial dump. Some of the pine nugget mulches leach and make a great mess on concrete.

If your mulch is around the size of a fifty cent piece or bigger it is heavy work to shovel and a lot falls off.

If you have a slope to negotiate then a heavy-duty rubber-backed tarp is excellent. I'd second meldy on that. You can park it alongside the heap and pull the material onto it with a rake.

The tough bit is unloading and that works better with two people.

For the unloading around plants Lindac's system is great. Shout yourself a pair of tough garden gloves and use the bucket as a scoop into the heap.

The daffs will be fine under the mulch when they die back. You could have a small stash of mulch for covering any patches left once the leaves go. The mulch might make it a bit damp for the gazanias and cosmos. However, if you're putting this under trees, expect better performance from them as the feeder roots will stay cooler and have more moisture available. If you need to fertilise using granules, straight over the top of the mulch just before rain is expected.

From experience I don't think I'd use a builder's barrow for the job. It's a lot of heaving to pour. You might not get as much in a shallow barrow but it's less wear and tear while you work. Whichever sort - it HAS to have a pneumatic tyre. Leave grandma's iron-wheel one for other jobs.

How deep are you mulching? And have you set up curbing to stop the birds kicking it over the lawn? (Logs or small-size poles as edging can be useful and save your temper.)

I shall think of you with reminiscent sympathy...;-)

will flowers grow through mulch?

I didn't read the whole thing, just the first question post, so excuse any duplicate info, unintentional!

Why not have the mulch load dumped on the bed initially? Is that an option? I would never try to shovel mulch, a pitchfork is a much better tool for this. A tarp is an easy way to move stuff around, or a baby pool (often available free on the curb, tho IDK about in Australia.) For either, fork a load on, drag to where you need, very little effort to 'dump.' This is the kind of thing I would ask friends to help with. Pizza & beer bribe?

"will flowers grow through mulch?"
Are they already planted? If adding plants to bed with mulch, scrape a little mulch away from where you're going to plant, dig hole for roots, install plant, don't replace mulch. Give it a few inches to breathe. After a heavy rain, some mulch may fall down near the plant in a thin layer, that's usually fine but you would want to check the first time at least, to make sure nothing is under too much. After the first rain, things kind of 'set' in place. Mulch added over the crown (where it emerges from the soil) or stems/leaves of an already growing plant could be harmful to it.

To mulch a planted bed, turn pots upside-down over top of plants to keep them from getting covered, add mulch, remove pots ASAP. Don't do while the sun is intense or plants will fry under there.

I don't own a wheelbarrow either, but do have a smaller 'garden cart' that I use a lot. A kid's wagon is a good garden worker too.