Shelley, You can use any organic (i.e. once living) material including leaves (preferably chopped or shredded so they won't pack down into a flat mat of hardened leaves), grass clippings, straw, haym, etc. If you put the paper bags under any of those materials, the paper bags will keep the weed seeds in the soil from sprouting and growing up through the mulch.

There are various ways to chop or shred your leaves. If you have a lawn mower, just pour the bags of leaves onto the ground, run over them a few times with the mower and they're all cut up into pieces. This is easier to do if you have a grass catcher attachment on the mower because then it captures the chopped up leaves for you, but even without a grass catcher, you can do it. You just have to rake up as much of the chopped leaves as you can and carry them to the garden. Another way is to put the leaves in a big rubber or plastic trash can. Fill it about half way full. Then start up your string trimmer and stick it down inside the can of leaves and it will chop them up just fine. Of, if you have or can borrow one of the leaf blowers that has a vaccum attachment, you can suck up the leaves into it. Our leaf blower sucks up the leaves and shreds them, collecting them in the attached bag.

Unshredded leaves might work. It just depends on your situation. Often, though, they blow around. Or, if you have frequent rain that moistens them, they can pack down into a surprisingly hard layer that can become almost too hard for moisture to easily penetrate. When I use leaves, I rarely use strictly leaves. I normally have some grass clippings mixed with them.

If you use lawn grass clippings, be sure to apply them in thin layers every week instead of in very thick layers. Very thick layers can heat up and create their own heat (kind of like compost heats up) and cook your plant roots. And, if your lawn was treated with a chemical herbicide of any sort, don't put the grass clippings on the garden. Put them on the compost pile instead.

Finally if you purchase hay to use, be sure it was not treated with herbicides. There's a particular class of herbicides that we now know can persist and kill gardens even after the material they are on/in, including cow manure, has been composted. There's nothing worse than having mulch or compost kill your garden because of a persistent herbicide. Even worse, sometimes these herbicides persist in the soil for several years to such a degree that you cannot raise much, except grain and grass crops, in those spots.

When friends give me old, spoiled hay, I ask repeatedly if it has been treated with herbicide. When I buy hay, I only buy alfalfa. Because it is a legume, it cannot be sprayed with those problem herbicides or it would kill the alfalfa.

Since hot weather is approaching, mulching is very important both to keep the ground cooler and to help it retain moisture. Keep in mind that you don't have to put heavy mulch down all at once. I put down about an inch of mulch right after planting, then I add to it almost weekly as the temps warm up. We always catch our grass clippings, so I have a source of grass clippings year-round since we generally overseed the acre around our house with winter rye grass for additional fire protection in winter. (It isn't that green grass won't burn, because it will, but rather that it is slower to ignite and burn and that's especially true of rye grass in the cool months because it sucks up and holds a whole lot of water in its blade.)

Sometimes I use a bagged product called soil conditioner as a mulch layer. It is a combination of very fine pine bark pieces and humus and I like to use it on beds that need some soil enrichment. When you use a soil amendment on top of the bed that way, it is called a feeding mulch. I still usually pile up more leaves or grass clippings on top of it.

You also can use partially decomposed compost as a mulch layer, but generally you need to put leaves or grass on top of it too because weed seeds will sprout and grow in it.

If you routinely shred your mail, you can use that shredded paper. Just wet it down when you put it on the bed and then put leaves or grass clippings or something else on top of it so it doesn't blow around.

When I pull weeds in my garden, I just drop them right on top of the hay/leaf mulch and let them decompose right there in the garden instead of carrying them out to the compost pile. If the weeds have gone to seed already, it is better to carry them to the compost pile.

Hope this helps, and am sure other folks will tell you what they do and how they do it too.

Dawn

Years ago before I had another source of mulch, I hand shredded newspapers and stirred them up so they were tangled. That way when laid on the ground they don't blow so badly. They can be used just like that and watered down. Not the prettiest mulch, but it worked.

I use a lot of pine needles. When I don't have enough, I use straw or alfalfa hay. Never, ever use prairie or bermuda hay!
I'm careful with the alfalfa hay. It can heat up if piled thickly, compressed down to much and then soaked. Best to apply loosely, allow it to decompose and then add more.

I just hauled a pickup l just hauled a load of weeds, Bermuda and Johnson grass to use for mulch. It is about my least favorite but I will deal with it because I am so hard up for organic matter. I will try to get some more oak shaving if they become available. Hopefully I can get some more shredded leaves next fall.

I have kind of evolved into using cardboard or heavy paper covered with chopped leaves. I don't mulch everything though. One year I used straw over cardboard and thought it looked better than anything I had used before, but I had vine borers and all kinds of creepy crawly things under it because it stayed damp. One year I used it on part of the garden without the cardboard and I spent the summer pulling wheat plants.

One year when I lived in Lone Grove I used hay on my beautiful tomato plants, and by that night they were all wilted and dying. That was the year they discovered that that broadleaf weed killer stayed in the hay. I have tried wood chips in flower beds and they floated away.

Most of the time, my reason for mulch is to limit the soil splash, not to conserve moisture, because I usually have plenty. I always mulch tomatoes for this reason and also so I don't have to weed under the plant, and reach into the cages and such.

This year I used chicken feed bags, which are three layers of heavy paper, then covered with chopped leaves, around the tomato plants only, and the remainder of the garden has only leaves. I grow a lot of vertical vine type plants that climb upward, so I don't require mulch to keep the fruit off of the ground.

Probably 85 percent of my garden got massive leaf cover last fall, so I could just pull that back to plant, then move it back again as the plants grew tall enough. It has worked fine for me for everything except the okra. I pre-sprouted the seed and tried to pull the leaves back and plant in the garden soil. With no leaf cover, the soil dried out and the plants didn't come up. I direct sowed watermelon in the same area and they came up fine. I will be planting okra seed again today, after soaking the seed, and praying that the rain will actually come this week. In the event it doesn't, there is already a soaker hose where I can keep the ground moist.

The compost that I buy has a lot of chopped straw in it so I think that also helps. When the rain comes, the nutrients and manures wash down, and the straw tends to come to the top and form a bit of a mulch.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I have several bags of dry leaves I collected this winter, but unfortunately I don't have a mower or a string trimmer or anything that I could use to shred them with. However, I laid down a couple of layers of brown paper grocery bags, then covered with the dry leaves and watered well. Hopefully this will work. If it doesn't and I have to buy a bag of mulch, is there anything in particular you would recommend? Fine bark mulch? Cotton burr compost?

I packed a plastic garbage can with holes in it (homemade composter) full of the remaining leaves and put the lid on. Hopefully they will break down in time.

I've used a variety of mulches. Including loose alfalfa hay from the hay yard, wheat & oat straw, grass hay and grass clippings. I try to shred the leaves I get and till them in. Either when I do the mulch or in the early spring. I have used cottonseed burrs in the past. A person needs to be careful where ever he gets his mulch unless he grows it himself or it is from his hay yard and he knows how the alfalfa/grass was treated before. Two years ago I got some wheat straw that had bindweed seeds in it. Hopefully I have eliminated it. Quit using grass clippings from the rec as I wasn't told they had sprayed before they mowed. It shriveled some plants bad. If you get bermuda grass clippings make sure they are totally dried out and dead before you spread it and also that none had went to seed. I've had some minor problems with those issues. Now that they are spraying so much you need to know if they sprayed the straw before they harvested the grain and baled the straw. Some of that spray residue can cause problems. I have experienced similar issues to what Carol mentioned especially if I leave the mulch on and don't till it under. In some areas they get by doing that as they get cold enough in the winter to kill anything hibernating/wintering over in the straw or just under the soil surface. Here we don't. The only mulch I don't normally till under is that on the horseradish and asparagus beds. Just last week I had planted some beans in a bed on the south side of the garage. I haven't worked that mulch in for 2 years. I pulled it back a little and there were many bugs. That should of been a warning. I went ahead and planted the seeds. All 8 germinated but some bug dined on two of them. So I pulled the mulch back even further and the damage ceased. What worked for Ruth Stout and others won't necessarily work here where our winters are warmer. Mulching cut my water use by at least 60%. And my sandy soil can use organic matter so I just till most of the mulch into the top 4-6 inches of soil every year. Jay

I use grass clippings because I have a lot of grass to mow and it's free. Last year it didn't seem to be quite enough. As it got hotter the grass stopped growing and my clippings broke down quite a bit, so most of my plants were toast. This year I'm expecting more of the same with the weather so I've added pine bark nuggets on top of the clippings to drop the temperature and retain moisture. I'm hoping it will help keep my plants alive a while longer.

I'm not sure whether to turn under the bark mulch at the end of the season or not. I don't want bugs overwintering in it like Jay was talking about, but I'm not sure if it'll throw off the nitrogen in the soil. I'm still pondering that.

I've also been known to use shredded paper whenever it's available, though usually I dump grass clippings on top of it.

Newspaper has never been a very good weed block for me but I have had some success using paper grocery sacks and cardboard.