Organic mulch never needs to be removed....you just add to it as necessary. And the bulbs will grow through it easily. For best effectiveness, mulch should be 3-4" thick but a heavier application can be appropriate as well......depends on the type of mulch ;-))

Nothing will keep weeds away permanently, altough mulching will help a great deal. Weeding is just a fact of life with gardening but the denser you have things planted and the more soil that is covered by plant material, the less weeds will appear.

I live in south florida -where the weeds never stop! Over time, if you continue to pull the weeds and mulch the bed, there will probably be fewer weeds every year. The newspaper will help suppress the weeds, cardboard lasts a bit longer but it's hard to cut and I don't use it in small spaces. You shouldn't need to scrape up the mulch, just pull as many weeds as you can and top with more newspaper and mulch.

Thanks for your quick responses. I am happy to not be scraping off mulch every year. So, even if you are not growing perennials it is OK to just keep putting on more layers of mulch and newspaper when you plant your annuals? I guess it feels like you are just digging down further to get to the actual dirt. Does it cause problems?

All organic mulch decomposes with time and adds to the soil. So you are really just slowly raising the soil level, not making deeper mulch ;-))

Don't let any weeds go to seed and try not to stir up the soil too much (it has buried seeds). That will help a lot. It'll take time and some work. That's gardening.