We have 50 oaks, half dozen or so pines, one super large black cherry and another dozen or so 'small' trees. We produce a whole.bunch.of.leaves. Oh, and I get leaves and grass clippings from the neighbors. And our neighbors have lots of oaks and pines. We have some mowable ground cover during summer and winter. And, I overseed winter rye. During heavy leaf falling periods, I mulch mow first. Then go back over and bag. I have two zones I dump the bags, one in the back and one in the front. During normal times of the year (no excess leaf falling), I mulch mow primarily and include the two leaf dump zones. Mulching over the leaves over a period of several months reduces it to nicely small particles. I spread dolomite/lime twice per year, usually. Sometimes I'll spread milorganite. In the front, I have a bottomless kids sandbox; roughly 4'x4'x8" that I fill with the mulched up leaves, needles, grass, tree stems and dead fall (from the dump zones) and add kitchen scraps. And add shredded mail. Whenever I can get a bag of used coffee grounds I add that. I don't really do much turning of the compost pile; it is full of worms and other bugs that crawl around under ground. I shovel out a hole, fill it with scraps; when it is full move around a bit and start a new hole. When the pile collapses, or gets too wet; I'll turn it out to a bed. (The bin is full of worms, it doesn't take much time for it to break down.) I try to start with a layer of cardboard, newspaper, and/or junk mail & magazines, old phonebooks, etc; then layer the stuff from the bin, then top with a thin layer of peat. I use lime regularly, but there is probably some other minerals I should be thinking of. At any rate, all those bags of oak leaves, pine needles and grass cuttings reduce down to a pretty small space in the course of a normal year. This spring has been the first since the spring of 2006 that I have regularly visited the far parts of our back yard. I have pots that have been unattended back there for more years than I like to think about. One of the pots, a 24" heavy clay pot has a black colocasia that has survived by itself. It had a good 6" of mother nature provided compressed leaves, pine needles and dead fall mulching the plant. And the pot had a healthy earthworm family. And by compressed, I mean that I had to work to tear the compost mat into pieces so as to not tear up the colocasia. This was before the rains, and the soil was not dried out. I'm thinking there is a lesson in that pot for me. (big grin) Maybe I don't need to mulch mow so much! ~dianne

I've used bagged cedar mulch in a couple of rows in the veggie garden. It did not seem to perform any better or any worse than any other mulch. I discontinued using it because the coppperheads like it a little too well and spent a lot of time lying on top of it and scaring me to death. In my garden, hay and/or straw do not seem to attract rodents, but then I have lot of cats and the cats perform very efficient rodent control. Until we raised the garden fence even the bobcats hung out in the garden and did some rodent control. I'd prefer a garden without rodents, snakes or bobcats, but there's only so much you can do to keep the wild things out in the wild when you're surrounded by wilderness. I have to say that keeping all the beds and all the paths in the garden heavily mulched in winter/early spring is even more beneficial than keeping them mulched during the main growing season. In the "old days" before I began mulching heavily, I'd get huge numbers of late winter/early spring weeds in the garden and have to spend a lot of time pulling them out or digging them out before I could plant. Now I just leave the mulch in place all winter, rake it out into the pathways at planting time, and then re-mulch when seeds have sprouted or transplants have become established. The savings in time is unreal. Not long ago a friend stopped by and asked to borrow a hoe. I told him I didn't have a hoe, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Really, though, who needs a hoe? With raised beds and heavy mulch, any weeds that sprout are easy to hand-pull. I used to have a hoe....and it did disappear.....and I don't know what became of it! Maybe it is buried under all the mulch? Dawn

The primary benefit of mulching of plants (not paths between raised beds) with a good organic material is stabilizing soil moisture levels and help in reducing weeds, not feeding slugs or pill bugs. Unlike straw, hay, pine straw, unfinished compost, shredded leaves, etc., bark mulch is not the ideal vegetable mulch. However if you have an abundance of both slugs and pill bugs and you choose to not treat the area with a pesticide then one of the secondary benefits of some of the mulches is keeping them in the mulch rather than on the plants. Wood chips or bark chips is also not the ideal in that case. Their diet is decomposing organic materials and wood is very slow to decompose. As for the paths between the beds you can use whatever form of mulch you wish. Is it going to drastically increase the pest population in the garden beds just because it is used on the paths? No, they are already there anyway. But since you have apparently ordered Sluggo you would likely use some of it on the paths as well as the beds too. Dave

I've never had it happen either Jerry, but it does happen from time to time. Traditionally, it was most common in boggy areas, and sometimes in loam that already had decent amounts of OM. The move to walled raised bed gardens though, seems to have created more opportunity for problems resulting from excessively high organic matter content. If the raised beds were created using mineral-based soils, it is less of an issue. However, we are seeing more and more cases of garden plantings suffering from too much moisture/not enough air. Another contributing factor, it seems to me, is the bagged 'soil'/amendment industry. Many of the products are sold as 'soil', but a close inspection of the ingredient label reveals that most of these products are the waste streams of the wood/pulp industry, the meat processing industry, and even the municipal sewer treatment 'industry'. Now, each of these, when properly processed, can be perfectly fine amendments to a soil. However, when people are unaware of how to apply them properly, or are 'victims' (not really the best word) of misleading labeling practices, then these products can contribute to excessive organic matter content. Basically... John and Jane Suburbanite, hoping to feed themselves and their children healthy food and create a little oasis all their own, engage in a little DIY and fall prey to an industry that is now largely in the hands of the big box stores. They want to keep things tidy in their little half acre, and build a few raised beds, as well as some nice perennial plantings. They go out to Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, or some of the other large stores staffed by sales people trained by the product vendors. They are steered towards the bagged 'soil' products which do not contain any actual soil at all. Even the sq. ft. gardeners can fall into a similar situation with the over-use of compost. Too much water-retaining capacity, not enough drainage nor porosity for air (CO2/O2, etc...) exchange.