I have previously not thoroughly mulched my garden because of the large slug population (meaning lots of large slugs) in my area, but try different methods each year. (There's already a LOT of iron in my soil, so I go sparingly with the iron phosphate- plants can get too much iron!)So I have tried the various "in between" methods you have mentioned and my parents alway put their mulch in the paths, not directly around the plants. They grow amazing veggies... mine are fine, but theirs are amazing! Mulch is good. Sometimes it brings pest problems if certain other things are happening too. :) And some mulching materials are better than others for different areas, as others have said! So, if you were to ask "how much of which mulch should I use?" I think the answer would be "what are you going to grow there, what are prevailing weather conditions in your area like, and what do you want the mulch to do for your garden?" Don't you just love a question that is answered with a question?? But then once you answer those questions, you can probably get concrete answers (although you will still find many diverse opinions! :) ) Cheers! Sunni

I recently planted a good sized vegetable garden. I've grown vegetables before but never really used any fertilizers and still got a pretty good yield. This was very common in ancient cultures, before humans understood the mineral (fertilizer) requirements of plants. A tribe would sow seed on a plot of land and get a good yield for awhile and then, for reasons not understood, plants would have increasing problems and yield would decrease after some time. The solution was to find another plot of land to grow crops on. Today we understand plants have certain requirements for minerals/salts in the soil they grow in and we also understand that some pests/diseases will build in population in the soil if the same crops are continuously planted. Unfortunately the average gardener doesn't understand plant nutrition well enough to know there is no organic or synthetic source of nutrition that will work optimally in all cases. A soil test which is always either free or at least affordable is required initially to determine what is in the soil. Is it alkaline or acidic or neutral in pH? Does it have too much of some nutrient and not enough of another? Does the soil require trace elements or just some macro nutrients or nothing at all? There is simply no way anyone can provide optimal fertilization of any piece of ground before knowing what is already in the ground and how available it is to plants. Certainly there are shotgun approaches like just dumping a lot of compost or manure on a garden or tossing a bunch of 10-10-10 synthetic fertilizer on the garden, but these approaches, while often OK, miss the point and fail to grasp what plants actually need. Gardens treated this way often have problems that are attributed to diseases or pests that are actually simple pH or nutrition problems that lead to pest/disease problems. You really need a good soil test (talk to your extension service if you live in the US). Get the result and then post back here, the organic forum or wherever you like for advice on how to turn your soil into what plants will thrive in. Without that baseline everything is just a shotgun approach to a guess.

Is hay preferable? If so, why? I had always assumed that hay brought in too many weed seeds. I'd rather use the hay though, it's cheaper around here. I use hay because it is free. ;) We mow and bale our own. Is it preferable? Besides being free, I think it is because like grass clippings it mats over time, doesn't blow around because it isn't hollow shafts like straw, and contributes more nitrogen to the soil over time - in theory anyway. ;) Old bales of hay have few weed seeds left in it and most of them can be shaken out out of the gardens as the mulch is applied. What few do sprout are easy to pull because as sprouts said, they don't develop deep roots. But you do need to put it on thick - any mulch needs to be several inches thick to be of benefit. We don't have near enough regular grass to use that way. Dave

Woody material, or any other organic material, used as a mulch will not "rob" anyones soil of any Nitrogen, where people think they have seen this happen is where they have used that mulch as a soil amendment, not a mulch. If any organic material is worked into the soil, as a soil amendment, the soil bacteria wil get right to work to digest that material utilizing the available Nitrogen which they use to make the protein they need to function. Then when they die they put that N back into the soil for future use by whatever. If that same material is put on the surface of the soil, not into the soil, as a mulch the soil bacteria will, eventually, get to work on it, digesting it and working it into the soil slowly, not enough to use enough Nitrogen from the soil to cause problems. In some 50 years of gardening I have not seen Nitrogen loss caused by using a woody material as a mulch, although I have seen that happen if the "mulch" is mixed into the soil.