plants need air circulation ...

whole leaves have the potential to suffocate plants .. especially maple ...

this weekend.. start processing a pile of leaves.. see how it all works ... it might be trickier than you think... depending on your machine ... twigs and sticks were my bane.. back in the day ....

but deep mulching.. OVER plants.. should be done very late in the fall ..all you might want to accomplish is to buffer sunshine off bare soil ... its not really about the plants...

back when i did it.... i did it AFTER the ground froze ... which makes me wonder... if its different in warmer zones ...

and that doesnt even address whether you have vermin ...

all zone appropriate plants .. should not NEED mulch covering .... so dont love them to death .... i used to put leaves.. mulched to about thumbnail size up to 6 inches deep all AROUND the bed.. but not over the plants ... and by spring.. it would be 4 inches.. and by august.. all gone .... in this case. though a fall mulch... by next spring it might have been called a soil amendment ...

ken

I agree with Ken - I have loads of huge oak trees. I mulch them (tons of work and as I get older and my knees and back start to question the sanity of this) , pile them up in a couple corners of my beds and then after a good hard frost, I rake them onto a tarp, drag them over to my beds and scatter them about 3-4" deep. It's much more of a soil amendment in my mind - yes, my heucheras continue to heave in spite of the mulch - but my soil is like black gold after the 5 years I've been mulching. Don't know how much longer I can do it, but wow, my shade garden thanks me every year. I rarely fertilize due to the leaf mulch and have hardly any weeks to pull - lots less work in the Spring. Now to go outside and mulch again!!!

Mary

I completely cover the crown of some of my 'stretch the zone' perennials; buddleia, hardy hibiscus, some hydrangeas, and others. Most years I wait until the ground is frozen to add the shredded leaf mulch. Some get a cage of chicken wire then leaves are added. It is important to remove the mulch in early spring to prevent smothering the plant and misshapen stems. I don't have voles.

I don't mulch over the crowns of plants, but I do mulch between plants. We have wet winters (90"+ of snow isn't unusual) and springs, and the combination of cool moisture and mulch leads to rot issues. I also see no reason to allow the voles to dine on my plants totally hidden from sight!

DH shreds leaves by running over them with the mower a couple of times, the final time with the bagger unless he wants to mulch them into the lawn. They can either go into the compost pile or directly onto the garden as mulch. Using the mower for shredding the leaves works best if the leaves are dry.

With our extreme cold the plants do not rot under the mulch during the winter. In the spring they start to grow under the mulch and either push through the mulch or grow sideways until the mulch is lifted. The concern is to lift the mulch before it gets too warm. I imagine if the mulch was not removed from the crown until summer there might be some rotting. Lifting/pulling back the mulch is a spring gardening ritual here. Lots of talk about pulling mulch back to help the soil warm.

For years I completely covered my beds with heavy mulch on advice from various professional sources in the area. This is a huge amount of work both in the fall and the spring. When I found out that for most of those professionals it was a case of "do as I say, not as I do" I quit covering all my beds. In their own gardens they either did not add winter mulch at all or only covered those higher zone plants that would not survive otherwise. "Too much work and/or too little time". They are willing to lose plants if we have little snow cover.

This is another example of how gardening practices differ in different zones.

Thanks everyone. Our winters in the lower Hudson Valley can get above freezing frequently during the daytime, although the last few years have had decent stretches where it has sat below freezing even during the day for weeks. I don't have many zone-pushing plants so sounds like it would be best to keep the mulch around the root zone only and not the crown. I do worry about the potted plants even though they're sunk into the ground--I may cover those completely once the ground has frozen because I'll be taking them out and planting them come spring anyway.

the only issue with pots sunk ... is that drainage remains ...

if you are sinking a pot with a high peat mix... into a hole dug from clay ... you might end up it drainage problems ...

if you soil is reasonably draining... it can be done ... [i cant quite tell if you mean you have done this in prior years ... or you just did them recently.. and its your first try ...

one might also ask ... why not just slip them out of the pots to go in the veg patch.. and repot them in spring ... simply removing the pot itself as a variable ...

success usually follows by removing as many variables as possible... and then trying to perfect those remaining ... without loving them to death .. which means.. adding variables that arent needed ...

covering them in thick mulch .... borders on loving them to death.. if you get carried away with the love.. i mean the mulch ....

ken

Thanks, Ken. The pots are sunk in our vegetable garden, which the previous owners built and must have put in all new soil because it's very black and loose. I don't have any concerns about drainage, knock on wood. I hesitated to plant them directly in the ground because they're very small--I started them from bare roots that I got pretty late in the spring when stores put the bare root plants on sale. They aren't even close to filling out the pots that I put them in. I also thought it will just be easier and quicker to sink the pots than to transplant twice--given they were so cheap I don't mind losing a few. Point taken though on loving too much!

This really does sound like you have discovered the rabbit hole of smother love, and are at least halfway down.

Summer mulching is spreading organic matter between the plants. It can be done any time, and many people end up doing it in the fall. Winter mulching is covering everything for protection. We don't do winter mulching, except under very special circumstances. Assume that when the plants need covering, snow will show up to cover them. Then the snow automatically disappears when it isn't needed.

I pick up the leaves with the mower and either throw the shredded leaves on the vegetable garden or pile them for spring. The spots where I put them on the perennial beds are only areas where there's little chance for voles or mice moving in over winter since like others have said, no sense in setting up a rodent hotel for the winter.

in the spring whatever leaves I can find are used on the perennial beds. No weeding and the plants thrive!

I have never had leaves (apart from those I had laboriously gathered from the local cemetery so gardening in woodland has been revelatory - gigantic heaps of leaves are a fraction of the size after a year and decomposed enough to make a decent mulch around plants and trees and still leave the fallen fresh leaves on the 'pathways'...but I have tended to mulch around the plants rather than on top (although I am also still making the most of bits of foliage and top growth). We rarely have snow-cover and I used to leave standing weeds at the allotment to protect the soil structure so autumn/winter mulching is new to me.

|I am hoping a mulch keeps weed germination down but it remains to be seens how effective it is. Even so, the wood is very generous - the compost pile is truly gigantic and I plant to be more strategic in collecting and saving more leaves (poplar and oak)

Covering marginally hardy plants with a big pile of leaves can be the difference between survival or not, a classic zone-pushing technique. I've done it in OH and AL.

Since you are in a woodland area, it may not matter much, but when I did that in my small suburban backyard, I ended up with so many pill bugs (rolly pollies) and snails. They had overwintered (or hatched at some point) and probably enjoyed living and eating in the motels that I made for them with the leaf mulch.

As an early birthday present I took delivery last week of one cubic yard of product which seems closer to being a compost than a mulch. As the load was dumped I mixed in several bags of shredded leaves. Took me most of yesterday to spread it throughout the garden.

Ah, but my allotment neighbour has voracious chickens who hoover up woodlice and snails with glee so an even bigger inducement to save leaves. I used to laboriously traipse along to the local cemetery with 3 dozen binbags and a rake to make the equivalent of a smallish compost bag after 2 years of rotting...but, yah know - it was free...and now, it seems as though I might even make enough lovely leafmould to be generous as a mulch (instead of sieving the precious bagful and hoarding it for my seed mix).

There are always mice families overwintering in the compost - we have to be fairly circumspect, turning it over in the spring when there will be an exodus of little furry creatures, none of which really bother me half as much as slugs.

Of course, I live in a climate where our ground freezes reliably and stays frozen for a number of months.

The last two winters for us have been almost record cold and snowy (at least from January to March). It is the snow that provides the best insulation for the plants. A heavily mulched garden (e.g. leaves or compost or etc) will be better able to cope with prolonged cold temperatures in which there is little snow cover.

(Most of the people that look forward to snowfall are ones that participate in winter sports. For me I want snow for my garden ;))

Applied after the soil has frozen, winter mulch will help maintain a more stable soil temperature, preventing frost heave that results from freeze-thaw cycles. It also helps the soil warm more slowly in spring, preventing too-early emergence of perennials. It protects plants from drying winter winds and, in spring, can help keep weeds down. Finally, an organic mulch will break down to help maintain desirable soil structure, add nutrients, and support the very important complex of soil organisms that contribute to a healthy garden/landscape.

We have a lot of oak leaves, which take so long to break down I find it best to shred them before using them as mulch in the garden beds. Excess shredded leaves are put into a large, covered garbage bin and saved to be added to the compost bin in summer when high-nitrogen "greens" are abundant, but high-carbon "browns" are scarce.

Just spent the weekend with my leaf shredder! I have almost 40 trees, mostly oaks, and I am absolutely inundated with leaves every fall. I have a leaf shredder and every year shred as many leaves as a I can manage. I store them till it gets cold (who knows when that will be this year?! Mid-November and 2 days ago it was practically 70!) I wait till the ground is frozen so I don't set up a vole hotel. I mulch around the plants, not over them. This way I don't have to worry about pulling back mulch in spring.

There have been years where a bed or two has not been properly raked out, so the whole leaves piled up. In those cases, I have gone out early and pulled back the whole leaves, and usually there is no damage. The problem there IMO is finding the balance between removing the whole, usually very wet leaves so they don't damage plants, and being careful of the usually-present tender new growth underneath, often farther along than the properly mulched beds. It can often be too early to expose that new growth to the still-cold temps. Then I try to throw some shredded leaves around the new growth, and only remove the matted wet leaves from the actual plants, not the whole bed, figuring I'll keep it there till it gets warmer. Hope that didn't confuse everyone!

The biggest challenge for me in fall is to shred enough leaves to store them for the spring as well. Like someone above said, by spring the mulch is greatly reduced, and I like to have more to put down. The challenge for me is time - between the oaks, whose leaves fall much later than other trees, and my work schedule, not to mention the early darkness now, I never have enough time to get out there and shred to my heart's content! And if we get an early snowfall, well, that's that!

I just think fallen leaves are a wonderful gift from nature, and I love the way they mulch the beds, enrich the soil, and keep the weeds down.

Good points diggerdee. We have people in our neighborhood--which is very wooded--whose landscapers come in, leaf blow their entire lawn and landscaped area, and bag up all the leaves for the town to haul away. I passed by one house yesterday that had about a dozen huge bags of leaves lined up. If they aren't gone by the weekend, I am very, very tempted to ask them if I can have them and haul them home to shred them up!

A sizable pile of leaves can prevent the ground from freezing, at least as far as Z5b. That's part of what makes it a successful zone-pushing technique, in addition to deflecting a lot of moisture flow from rain away to the edges.

AJS - In my younger days, DH and I would haul leaves from some of the suburban developments a few miles away for compost. Just be careful that you don't get leaves from yards that use a lot of broad-leafed weed killers which sometimes stay in the plant tissues, especially if there are grass clippings mixed in. We always just took them from non-manicured yards.

For years I have collected leaves near and far to mulch my beds and to fill three large compost bins. This year I am unable to do anything other than cover a few zone pushing plants and the bins are filled with compost that didn't get spread earlier. My neighbors will bag and place the bags for our yard waste facility to compost. Sometimes that is a not choice one wants to make but is the reality. Most of my perennials will survive with the coverage of leaves that were blown into them on windy days.

The spots where I put them on the perennial beds are only areas where there's little chance for voles or mice moving in over winter since like others have said, no sense in setting up a rodent hotel for the winter.

That is my concern. I am thinking that if one lays (shredded) leaves too early i.e. prior to a deep freeze then one is more likely to have small rodents take up residence within the leaf mulch for winter shelter.

If one already has rodents before leaves fall, the leaves are irrelevant unless they prevent rodents from seeking shelter inside, in which case I call it a win. If zone pushing is part of the equation, leaves are also irrelevant after a deep freeze. As with about anything in life, there are pros & cons.

leaves are also irrelevant after a deep freeze

I am thinking that such mulch reduces the effect on a plant of the freeze thaw cycle that occurs due to temperature changes in the late winter, very early spring.

Semantics. I'm not sure how "deep freeze" is being used here. You wait until the ground is frozen...not frozen 2-3 feet or more down, just frozen a few inches and then apply the mulch. By the time that happens several things will have occurred. First, the critters will have found another place to overwinter (if they were coming into your home they would have found their way in long before you had leaves to mulch with). Second, get 'em dormant, keep 'em dormant is always a good idea. Third, by keeping the ground frozen it dissuades rodents that may re-activate on warm days because if it were soft ground to even partially bury themselves in, that is a cozy thing to them.

This is true in my zone 5. As with anything in life, your zone may vary.

tj