Mulching does serve more than one purpose. In vegetables gardening it can accomplish several things:

1- conserve/retain moisture better/longer

2- prevent soil temperature fluctuation in 24 hours. In this case you would need a mulch material with good insulating property, like hay, pine needle, pine bark ...

3- help reduce weeds growth to some extent.

In all these cases one needs to lay down a good layer of mulch material. I would say about 2" thick.

so goes the old adage :

MULCH IT ! MULCH IT ! MULCH IT !

Sey

There are other benefits to mulching - depending on the mulch used - other than weed control or soil warming. Stabilization of the soil's moisture level is a big one and is vital to tomato plants. Another is soil improvement as the mulches decompose.

So for both those reasons, yes, I'd recommend mulching. But the type of mulch used for those purposes is organic, quickly decomposing, non-nitrogen binding mulches such as straw, shredded leaves, hay, pine straw, compost, etc., NOT plastic or landscape fabric and not wood chips.

Only back plastic or black landscaping fabric will actually 'warm' soil. Organic mulches such as straw, chipped leaves, hay, etc. will actually keep the soil cooler than the ambient air temp.

Dave

I also have a ridiculous amount of pine straw..pretty much everywhere I look. Thanks!

You are lucky, Nicole. Down south in GA I used to use just pine straw. I found it to be the best mulch. As Dave said, it is also a soil conditioner. At the end of season just work it into the soil and let it compost over the winter/ off season months.

Sey

Yeah envy you. Only have access to relatively small amounts here. What you don't use, bag and store for using next year too.

Dave