Lowes has been having trouble keeping all the various mulches in stock this year. I tend to think it is because people are still somewhat stuck at home and spending more time and money in their yards. Demand is high. The supply chain is not keeping up.

As a general landscape guideline, the color of your mulch is not supposed to be the focal point of your garden. The plants are. The mulch is temporary weed control until the plants completely cover the ground. If your are fussing over the mulch color and amount of time the dye lasts you are focused on the wrong thing.

Both the Premium Brown and Scotts more expensive color enhanced brand name are ground up scrap wood as in old pallets. I have found actual trash in both. Mulch wise they are the same thing. The bugs may prefer the fresh mulch from real trees that comes from the sawmill for a good reason.

as my entire garden is in nature.. imo... mulch that turns the natural grey color is the only alternative ... everything else looks artificial .....

lifes too short to be painting or staining your mulch ...

i dont interior design the colors in my garden but for natural flower colors ....

i even regret painting my cedar deck railings ..... to coordinate it to the house trim color ... i should have left it to its natural color progression ...

paint once.. paint for life ...

those are all my cliches for this morning ...

ken

In my area, the ground is naturally reddish-brown. The "natural" look would either look like dirt, leaves, or pine needles, so gray is what ends up looking artificial! LOL

I wish that I could have just used rock and containers for plants, honestly, because I live near an old quarry and rock looks natural. I tried that at first, though, and leaves and pine needles made it look terrible within a few months :-/ That was 15 years ago, and I'm STILL digging up rock!

i even regret painting my cedar deck railings .....

Same :-( I let my girlfriend bully me in to doing a lot of things that I regretted later... her tastes run more suburban where mine run more au naturel, and sometimes it's hard to find middle ground.

If your are fussing over the mulch color and amount of time the dye lasts you are focused on the wrong thing.

Agreed,@Christopher CNC, I'm just trying to figure out if I can justify paying 50% more. If it's more or less the same thing, though, then it's pretty hard to swallow.

The bugs may prefer the fresh mulch from real trees that comes from the sawmill for a good reason.

I'm sure! If it was attracting bugs that are already here, though, then I'd be OK with that... it's the introduction of new pests that cause the problem. Last time I did it, I ended up vacuuming THOUSANDS of millipedes in the house, every day!

I'm with the first poster that they are both essentially the same, hard to justify the extra cost for a brand name mulch. I use black mulch inside my courtyard (suburban) because my fence is black so it blurs the boundary, the rest of my mulch is delivered by a tree company, just whatever they ground up that day.

If you require that much mulch - 480 cubic feet - then it would be a no-brainer to skip any bagged product and go with whatever the sawmill has to offer. Bagged goods are 3-4 times the expense of any bulk soil goods. Millipedes are harmless to live plants so if they were present, that would not be a detriment to using the sawmill mulch.

And I would never consider adding any dyed product to my garden! Natural wood based mulch should age naturally. As Christopher noted, the mulch is not the *star* of the garden and should not be taking center stage. All it needs to do is protect the soil surface, suppress weed development and help to conserve soil moisture - whatever plants are present are what the attention should be focused on.

Bulk mulch from the sawmill is getting pricey, but still less per cubic foot than bagged mulch. However - bagged mulch can be a god send in mountainous terrain in landscapes where no wheelbarrow is going to go and end up costing about the same. A machine is far more efficient and cost effective putting mulch in easy pour carry bags than trying to repackage a dump truck pile of ground mulch for transport to places no wheelbarrow will go.

Millipedes are harmless to live plants so if they were present, that would not be a detriment to using the sawmill mulch.

I would have been fine with them if they'd stayed in the garden!! My issue was when they came in the house... I would literally suck up thousands every night before bed! It took 2 years to get rid of them, and I'm pretty sure they did permanent damage to the padding under my carpet.

One year they came with a delivery of termites, too :-O That had me in a near panic, and was one of the few times that I've ever used chemicals to treat my property.

trying to repackage a dump truck pile of ground mulch for transport

That reminds me of another issue... nowhere to actually dump that much mulch :-/ Back then I would pay a local company to deliver it and spread it for me so there was no issue with storing it somewhere, but that was pre-COVID and I had a lot more money back then.

If I can get all of these trees cut down this year, though, then I would have more space and could potentially make my own dang mulch!! :-D

You need to learn how to garden like you actually live in a rural area. No mulch required. The one exception is for the roadside vegetable garden.

@Christopher CNC, when I bought the house it had a paved driveway, and a pave sidewalk leading from the drive to the front porch. It had a mulched border on the outside with mondo grass and landscape lights, then a bunch of juniper bushes on the inside next to the house.

I tore out the juniper and did my own garden:

How would you suggest doing this area without using mulch?

I originally thought of mulch for the appearance and smell, but no I think of it more along the lines of adding nutrients to the soil. But I'm pretty open to suggestions :-)

Mulch is something that falls from trees.

"How would you suggest doing this area without using mulch?"

More of the same plants to fully cover the ground along with a very short creeping groundcover.

Mulch is a wonderful gardening tool- it retains moisture, and slowly breaks down to add texture to the soil. Of course plantings and ground covers should expand over time so the area requiring yearly application should shrink but will never go away entirely.

@HALLETT & Co., I really do agree. But in all honesty, it's not all that easy to come up with the mulch budget these days!

@Christopher CNC, what type of (evergreen) ground cover would you suggest? I planted Chocolate Chip ajuga in my rear garden, but it seems to be choking out everything that it touches. Same with creeping jenny and Anne Marie ivy. Or would you suggest that I do a regular "weeding" to clear the ajuga out from underneath the other plants?