I had no idea there was any problem with the bagged mulch , yikes . I have bought 80 bags and put down 20 so far .. next year I will not and will switch to pine nuggets ( something I had wanted to do but my needs are for a lot of cheap mulch ! )

i would definitely choose the mulch from the trees as it is free ( hallelujah! ) . I signed up for chip drop , a organization that helps tree companies dispose of their chips but in one full year have never gotten any, we are out in the boonies and I doubt anyone will go out of their way.

I also have been meaning to try pine straw too but it is so so windy here I'm afraid it would go to waste

Surprisingly, pine needles stay put here, even though we happen to have stormy winds. I like to use them as a mulch. But don't have endless source of them. This year I will try shredded sissoo leaves in addition to straw. We have abundance of them trashing our yard from our neighbor's tree.

By the way, yes, don't think that pine straw will fly everywhere. I don't remember my in-law family in Georgia had any problems with it and they have tons of pines on their properties. It will stay there (even on house roofs) until you clean it up. Lilyfinch, you should try it on one part of your garden and see if you like it.

I don’t think it’s all bagged mulch but I read one article that got me crazy, and now I’m questioning it, lol

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/soil

(the soil, compost and mulch forum)

Though for how it "would look" (your question), rather than how it would function, this rose forum will have many more posters with hearty opinions on the matter.

I had a load delivered the same day I signed up with Chip Drop. Guess I got lucky! The chips are nice and uniform and you can't beat free. Especially if you can get it from your own trees.

They do look a bit "raw" when first put down, but after a week are already starting to darken. I figure once the plants leaf out and cover most of it I won't care how it looked for the first few weeks. They'll also enrich the soil as they break down, so that's a nice bonus.

That's great wild haven !! I thought about paying the 25$ they ask to get my name at the top of the list . But I already bought my black mulch so maybe next time . I'm so glad to hear you got it though, it's encouraging!

I use leaves - they're free and people so kindly bag them up and leave them at their curbs in fall. I use the bags for winter protection then save them to replace all year as mulch in the beds. The leaves break down faster than wood mulch, but that just enhances the soil faster. Oh, and did I mention free?

If I need to hold the leaves down to keep them from blowing away, I segregate the bags of leaves where people have so kindly shredded them as well for me. The shredded leaves keep the underlying whole leaves stable, and the underlying leaves keep the shredded leaves from matting up too much. I'd use pine straw for this if I had it, but we don't have that many pines in our region. I like the brown look of the leaves once the roses grow up, but if you wanted to pretty it up a bit you could layer a thin covering of the mulch of your choice on top of the leaves just for the cosmetic purpose.

Cynthia

I purchase these products and use them for mulch and mixing with our lousy soil when planting. I get them from the local farm and ranch store, which sells wonderful products, for extremely competitive prices: high quality (no rocks, debris, etc) composted manure with some wood fines mixed in the manure; organic compost I love called Nu Life; and a product called Soil Pep. Different products are used in different areas of my garden. These products break down fast, even in our dry climate. Wood chips and chunks take decades to break down, depending on their size. Diane

I hate the dyed shredded mulch but have to use something as my HOA has pretty strict rules. It can also get windy here so I have to use something that won't blow away.

I'm trying this, hopefully my HOA won't give me a hard time about it. It smells really good, like cedar or pine. They sell it at my Home Depot and the bags aren't too heavy. I need around 50 for my yard.

Last year I used a soil pep product but it mostly blew away.

Yay, I found a source for undyed hardwood mulch here; am getting two deliveries a year.

Whether it is labelled dyed or not, bagged mulches which are a uniform red, brown, or black get that way by being dyed.

I use pine bark fines. Usually sold as “soil conditioner” at Lowes. I like to layer it over horse manure compost which I have an abundance of. I’ve been very happy with the results over the years on my heavy clay soil.

I have a rose friend who had people (she knew them) start coming into her backyard and peering into her window and wandering through her yard. I suggested a sign that said trespassers will be used as mulch. LOL

Carol

I’m using compost instead of mulch on my rose beds. My compost is mainly a mixture of wood fines and manure that I buy from the feed store. It probably is not a durable as mulch, but it does help with evaporation and weed control, as well as feeding them very well.

Perhaps a call to the local police about a peeping tom problem might be in order, along with a security video and jotting down license plate numbers. The nerve of some people is unbelievable. Diane

Diane - no, that was a few months ago. She has since broken off with this person. :) I know! She felt violated!!

Carol

I am not sure if it is the best thing, but I bought a Sun Joe leaf shredder to cut up Banyan leaves. When I first started doing roses, I did not mulch and had to fight weeds as well as water all the time. Then I bought some really pretty red mulch and put it down. Loved the look, but as it broke down in DID NOT help the soil, in fact it caused my soil to repel water. The ground would not get wet. It was awful. So, when I notice that as I was picking up the leaves from the Banyan the dirt was dark and black... not common for our Florida sand. I had earthworms in it.... so I grumbled at myself thinking for years I have been throwing away all of these good leaves.... I do notice that when I put the leaves down the roses leaves get lighter in color for a week or two probably because of the N. However, my sand now has earthworms in the roses. YEAH!

My husband uses the grass clippings around the bushes to keep the weeds down and the moisture in.

A myth, apparently, about wood chips robbing the soil of nitrogen. That would be true if you tilled it into the soil, but resting on top means only a thin layer will be in contact with the wood. The roots of the plant run much deeper and wouldn't have a problem with uptake.

I use pine bark mulch. I'm really not rich, just frugal. It decomposes extremely slowly, so in the long run it's the cheapest mulch of them all.

The Vigoro dyed wood mulch is risky from the possibility of both chopped up shipping pallets and discarded/demolished old house wood (lead contamination potential), being used. It decomposes so fast it needs fresh application every year. It often has an unpleasant odor, too.

Moses

I use pine straw underlaid with cardboard as a weed barrier. I pick up yard bags at homes that have a lot of pine trees. We don't have a lot of wind here, but regular leaves blow around. Pine straw doesn't.

I use the oldest stuff from the manure pile at the barn where I keep my horse. There is still a lot of wood shavings in it, but it’s all a medium brown color and I make sure there is no ammonia smell. I also take home the alfalfa fines that my horse and his neighbor leave in their hay bins, and sprinkle handfuls of that around before the mulch. On top of all that, any ground which might still be exposed after things are growing gets a layer of red much to appease my husband.

Last year on sone of my roses, I used pine needles and even the cones, and then bagged steer manure on top. The steer manure sank into the pine needles with watering. The pine needles knit together, and kept the manure from blowing away compared to those where I just used the steer manure. Those roses did particularly well last year, but I don't have enough pine needles to do all my roses in that manner.

When feeling energetic in the fall, I would go garbage picking and collect as many bags of leaves as I could find. I stored them on top of my vegetable garden over the winter

I had some "free" labor to help with the work, but that didn't last long, lol. I bought a shredder and shredded them one year, but that was way too much work. My soil benefited greatly from these leaves, but now I use plain, single ground wood chips. I pay $15 per yard and get a couple of 10 yard loads per year. I have a large pile going all the time and by the time I finally get them spread, they are halfway composted. Because they are in big chunks, they last a couple of seasons. Not nearly as good as leaves, but not as much work, either.

Hey, you're my kinda guy Al! That's what my yard looks like after I've pulled my leaf bags off the roses, except that they're much more beat up after being out all winter and not nearly so neatly stacked. Mine stay tucked behind a garden shed and an unused play structure most of the season so they're more or less out of sight. I can relate to your picture though, as I collect about 200 bags of leaves in the fall. I'm too lazy to store them after the first year and just lay them out on the edges of the garden beds as I collect them.

I've met the nicest neighbors though as I ask them if I can take their leaves.

Cynthia

My husband has a mulcher that he runs over maple leaves in fall to shred them, and we pack that leaf mulch in around the roses pretty tightly in prep for winter. Sadly, I pulled it back from the roses a couple days ago and it's about to get cold again, so have to pile it all back up tomorrow and leave it there for another week or more. It's hard this time of year in Asheville, NC—I'm ready to get out there and so little can be done, other than pulling weeds. The soil has to warm up before it can be worked, otherwise it hardens into rocky clumps and stays that way.

Pam- Do you have any problem with mice girdling your roses? I did that once and lost an entire bed.

I don't know about "mice girdling," but it might be my new favorite phase! We had voles take out several roses and an oakleaf hydrangea after our last German Shepherd (who was a prolific hunter of pests) died in 2011. So then we put in hellebores, (Lenten Roses), which are toxic to voles, as companion/protector plants, and I also scritched in Soil Perfector, which is a type of serrated-edge soil conditioner that voles hate, around all of the plants we wanted to save. No issues since.

We usually get a truck load of red mulch (larger chips) from our local nursery. I like the contrast of the red mulch with foliage. A few years we've just gotten bags of it from Lowes. It lasts a long time, and some years we just need to add a bit here and there.

This year we realized our soil is perhaps a bit too alkaline. Very unhappy azaleas. Our local nursery had a sale on fine chipped pine mulch, $19.95 per cyd. We opted for that that this year hoping to help the soil a bit long term.

In addition I've sprayed a bit of sulfur powder in the beds, particularly around the azaleas. They are already much happier. I'd also read that sulfur powder is good to repel pests, like spider mites, ticks, etc..

I use wood chips. I have considered collecting bags of leaves from the street but I am concern about dog poop being mixed in. Has that been an issue for y'all.

Suncoastflowers, I've never run into dog poop in any of my leaf bags in 5-6 years of 200+ leaf bags/year, but maybe it has something to say for my neighbors. I can't imagine they'd be any happier to be scooping up dog poop to deposit along with the leaves any more than you'd be happy to be on the receiving end of the poop. Even with gloves or those "leaf grabbers" you'd have to have your nose so close to the handful that it would be an unpleasant experience for the homeowner enough to discourage them. If you can't count on people to do something courteous (and leave out the poop), at least you can count on them to do something self-serving.

Not saying it can't happen, just that I haven't seen it. Candy wrappers, cigarette butts, plastic pull ties. huge branches - those have been in the leaf bags, but I can deal with those.

Cynthia

Oh yeah, I've found dog poop in the bags of leaves. I consider it a little extra free nitrogen.

Nipstress, That picture is from the fall just after having collected the leaves. They looked pretty nasty after the winter. I ended up just pitch forking them into my garden cart as the bags had partially decomposed or ripped.

this year i'm using 2 year old leaf compost from nature's way screened to two inches web site claims it's a mixture of oak leaves and horse manure aged two years...it is wonderful

I am getting something called 'fertile mulch' from a local nursery,, they say its composted saw dust and manures...it will be here today and boy.. am i excited!!