To know just what they mean by what one bag will cover you need to know the depth they applied it. If your mulch is meant to help control "weeds" it needs to be a minimum of 3 inches and preferably 4 to 6 inches thick, unless you have some newspaper or cardboard to supplement that. At 2 inches you definately will need some other barrier under the mulch for it to be effective.

I am at at Tim Horton's parking lot (free WiFi) so that I can get on my macbook to find a thread in the Hosta forum somewhere that could help me remember exactly what size pine to use in my media for my pots. Well, lo and behold I found this perfect thread and I thought it could use a 'bump' for this season considering there have been media questions. Anyway, now I can go back into Canadian Tire feeling confident that I will buy the right stuff. You should have seen the young lads face when I couldn't decide what to buy and I told him that I would be back after I visited my forum and asked my hosta friends :) Again...thanks so much to all of you really experienced folks who share your knowledge with the rest of us!

Thanks all, I thought if they provided something useful to the soil/plants, like iron, after broken down, it might make sense to leave them. But as kimmq mentioned, they wouldn't provide the right kind of stuff anyway. I think they were steel, about 2", but not sure. And now that I think about iron too, cast iron type tub comes to mind... I guess I need to refresh my memory on chemistry a bit - probably no iron in those staples, but that's just an un-educated guess. So I had only put the piles of compost in the center, and was able to go around and easily pull out the staples. Covered in compost and mulch now, so it's all good, and I have a clearer mind that there won't be rusty staples out there for me, my pooch, or others to step on in the future because of me. But I do feel like a dufus... I had this big accumulation of cardboard boxes in my garage that just kept growing larger. Hated to put them in the recycling bin because I might need them to ship something in sometime. And I was initially buying newspaper, then postal shipping paper, then Home Depot rolls of construction paper(?) to put down before the compost and mulch. Then the light bulb went on, and it must be one of those low level solar lights in the yard that are too dim, and last too short a time :-)... Hmmm, why don't I use those boxes instead? For what I was spending on newspaper and construction paper and shipping paper, I can use the boxes instead, and if I need a box sometime, I've saved enough to splurge and buy one :-)

I use cypress mulch on the beds, it lasts longer than most other wood products, does not mat, and doesn't mold when there is an extended period of rain. I use cedar mulch, the largest size pieces I can find, on the pathways. Cedar mulch lasts for a number of years, does not mold or mat, but it has some growth retardant properties that make it less ideal for the hosta beds. Cedar mulch also helps with flea control, and the local rabbits always vacate the area when I put down a new layer, apparently they don't care for the smell or taste.