Mulch is a material that is placed on the soils surface to help in retaining soil moisture, aid in suppressing unwanted (weed) plant growth, aid in moderating soil temperature, and aid in adding organic matter to that soil.
Mulch should be a material that will be digested by the soil bacteria, a once living plant material.

Technically, 'mulch' is a protective layer placed on top of the soil surface. It has various benefits and depending on the type of mulch and the need for it, can supply one or all of the following:
1) Prevents soil erosion
2) Moderates soil temperatures (insulates in winter and prevents overheating in summer)
3) Retains soil moisture/slows evaporation
4) Guards against soil compaction
5) Helps to suppress weed growth
6) Can help to keep plants clean and fruits/vegetables off muddy soil
7) Can reduce the occurrence of diseases by preventing fungal spores from splashing onto foliage with rain
8) Improves the appearance of the garden
9) If an organic mulch, can assist in supplementing necessary plant nutrients, stimulating soil biology and improving soil structure and fertility.

Mulches can be either organic or inorganic and there are justifiable reasons for using either.....it depends very much on your specific situation, which of the listed benefits you need to achieve and the type of garden. Pretty much anything that can be applied as a layer to the soil surface can be used as a mulch.

Thank you both. Now a follow-up:

If you buy pre-packaged commercial mulch, would you expect it to be have weed seeds in it?

What if you bought 600 bags of the stuff?

There's someone in the WEEDS forum who thinks the purchaser is to blame for this.

I didn't answer the initial quiz because I thought the first two nailed it and I'm not big on metoo posts.

I didn't realize that the question you wanted answered wasn't the question you were asking.

"If you buy pre-packaged commercial mulch, would you expect it to be have weed seeds in it? "

That depends on the mulch.

Mulch is basically anything that you put on top of the soil (there are even mulches made from tires, although I wouldn't use one).

As far as I know, there's no legal definition of mulch that requires it to be free of weed seeds.

I'll give an example.

Hay and straw are often used as mulches. Hay is less likely to include seeds (although it can) but straw often has lots of seeds in it. If you use enough of it, the straw will smother the seeds and keep them from sprouting. If you don't use enough, the seeds will sprout.

I don't think the purchaser is to blame. I think the mulch is to blame.

But if the purchaser applied a thin layer of mulch that could reasonably be expected to contain weed seeds, or if the purchaser neglected to inquire what the mulch contained, the purchaser shouldn't be too surprised to see weeds sprouting from the mulch.

"What if you bought 600 bags of the stuff? "

I'd either hot compost it before using it or I'd apply ti thickly enough that weeds wouldn't be a problem.

Rain2fall,
I have a question for you. How long did it take the weeds to grow after the mulch was applied? I'm just wondering if the weed seed came in the mulch.
Several years ago my neighbor spent a lot of money on his yard. He bought some kind of weed barrier and put that around the bushes and plants in front of his house. Next he put some rock edging around everything and finished it off with 6 inches of mluch. It looked really nice. Two months later we are standing there looking at the 1 and 2 foot tall weeds growing in his mulch and he cannot understand how they grew through the weed barrier and 6 inches of mulch.
So where did the weeds come from?

jim_6b

Whether there will be "weed" seeds in any mulch material will depend on the source of that material. If it is from a living material there will more than likely be "weed" seeds in it because the tree trimmers that make the chipped or shredded mulches are simply not going to short out these seeds and do not do their work only when there would not be seeds on the plants. However, even if you did get a mulch material that was free of "weed" seeds birds fly over and drop "weed" seeds everywhere, and many of theose "weeds" are favorite food sources for birds.

It wasn't me that this happened to. It was a lady that posted in the WEEDS group. It got my dander up when somebody over there told her off. So I thought I'd come here and ask the experts.

To my mind, since one function of mulch is to prevent weeds, it only makes sense that it shouldn't have weeds in it. At least, not for bagged mulch sold by chain stores.

Anyhow, thanks guys for the input.
BTW, I'm learning from this forum and may even get around to rescuing my compost pile!

I read the post on the weed forum and from what the person described it sounds like the weed seed came from the mulch. In my neighbors case they came from birds, the wind blowing seed and him blowing grass full of seed into the beds with his mower. He had a large variety of grass and weeds growing and the fact that he didn't bother to go outside and pull weeds just made it worse.
jim_6b

Putting a mulch down, if that mulch is thick enough, will keep any "weeds" that might grow from the soil that mulch covers from growing there. Nothing was ever said or implied that "weeds" would not grow in the mulch material, although most of the time you will not see that for several months. As the mulch material is digested and converted into humus "weeds" will be more likely to grow there, and of course adding those types of seeds will cause more "weeds" to grow.

The bent this thread was taking intrigued me so much, I had to read the post on the Weeds forum this one referred to. Other than what appears to be a rather large overreaction from the OP, I'm not sure what the deal is. Some mulches make a very good seedbed for weeds - that's just the way it is. The finer the texture, the more likely weed seeds will readily germinate. Mulch only helps to suppress the weeds and their seeds that already exist under it. There is no guarantee it will stop weed seeds from germinating that may be blown in with the wind, be brought in by birds or other wildlife or dispersed by the plants themselves. Unless that mulch has been treated with some sort of preemergent herbicide and that would be clearly indicated and demand a much higher price.

And there is NO way to prevent weed seeds from hitchhiking into a mulch along with its primary material. It happens and it is no one's fault. One usually encounters this most frequently with a compost product that is not sufficiently heated to kill off weed seeds but it can occur with any type of mulch, although with less frequency. Hay and straw mulches bring their own seeds with them and aged (not composted) manures can be prone to weediness as well.

Since there are no regulations on what the contents of a mulch can/should be, suing someone because one suspects it came with weed seeds is preposterous and the case would be laughed out of court, should it ever get that far. If you have weeds -- from whatever source -- you weed. Manually, with a prepared herbicide, smothering by some means, whatever. Mulch should help to suppress their return but provides NO guarantees that the area will remain weed-free for any length of time nor that weed seeds may not be part of that mulch product.

You pays your monies and you takes your chances :-)

As gardengal48 eluded too, I have various weeds that grow IN the mulch.

Its not widespread, but there are weeds that have there roots in the mulch itself.

Its worst for the bed that is next to a field that is full of weeds and if only cut down twice a year.

BTW, who is there right mine would buy 600 lbs for mulch from a chain store? I thought those were reserved for purchasing less than 1-2 yards.

Yeah, I wondered about the 600 bags of mulch from Wallmart. Much better to get a dumptruck load of it. I'm thinking about the ordinary meaning of the word "mulch"--since one primary purpose is to keep down weeds, it shouldn't be rife with weed seeds.

My over-reaction (and I admit as much), was to the fellow who blamed the customer for not "taking personal responsibility." That phrase has taken on an ugly undertone in recent years and is used to defend businesses that use improper practices.

The old "buyer beware" has been dead for decades in the law. It has been replaced with reasonable consumer expectations. Lacking a precise legal definition for "mulch," the reasonable expectation that mulch will not provoke an immediate invastion of think weeds would prevail.

Rain2Fall

If we could all be weed free then wouldn't that be nice :-)

There's a difference between "being weed-free" and buying "filled-with-weed-seed mulch." :-)

But we only have the OP in the Weeds forum's description of the 'problem' with nothing else to back it up :-) It could very well be (and judging from the extent of the overreaction, it very likely is) a large exaggeration of the situation. And cause does not necessarily equal effect......they laid a different type of mulch and were inundated with weeds, ergo the mulch was contaminated with and produced the weeds. Cypress mulch may very well be a more fertile seed bed for weeds than the previous mulch used and the weed seeds themselves blew in or were somehow otherwise introduced. And you gotta wonder about the length of time involved -- 'sprucing up the garden for spring' and then complaining about weeds from the mulch in mid August stretches the credibility of the post. What the heck were they doing for the last 6 months?? Of course there could be weeds present now and a lot of 'em if they hadn't bothered to tend to them!

But contemplating suing somebody because the mulch contained or supposedly contained weed seeds??..........that's just nuts! And would be pretty darn hard to prove in court.

I unfortunatly have seen someone who got termites in his mulch Yikes huh...

No way would I buy mulch from any sorce for the following reason
1 ) I store the fall leaves out back a little labor on my part gets me ZERO dollors Mulch
I simply get out the old mower re rake the dried leaves up a small incline and run em over to chop em up it takes about half a day on a week end but wahhh lahhh 100 % organic mulch that is WEED free and hand made

Last seasons mulch gets removed from the beds and added to the compost pile

PS youll be begging people for there leaves next fall

I had to look and I think i found the thread in the weeds forum. I think this is it.

I can understand that somebody might get upset at finding weeds growing through the mulch and could come to the conclusion that the seeds came from the mulch since different mulches had been used in the past. It's even possible that the weeds came from the mulch.

I think the OP of that thread was prone to exaggeration. I'd hope so. Why would somebody buy 400 2 cf bags of mulch? That's almost 30 cu yds. That's a huge amount, and would take two or three large dump trucks to deliver in bulk. How many trips in a car or pickup truck would that take? Why would anybody buy that much mulch in small bags like that?

As others have stated, it would be difficult to prove that the weeds came from the mulch and even if it did, I'm not sure there's any legal liability on the part of the vendor or the manufacturer. There may be laws regulating how many weed seeds can be in X amount of mulch, but if there aren't, I doubt if there's much legal recourse.

I actually thought the manufacturer showed a lot of concern, offering to send somebody to the house to look into it.

If the OP in that thread wanted to pursue a lawsuit, the OP would have to hire a lawyer to pursue the case. The lawyer would charge either a percentage of the settlement or an hourly fee.

If the lawyer thought there was a good chance of winning the case and getting a substantial settlement, the initial offer would be for a percentage of the settlement. It would be a long time before the suit wended its way through the courts, but maybe a settlement could be worked out to avoid the hassle.

If the lawyer thought there wasn't much chance of a big settlement, the hourly rate would likely be more than the settlement.

Another option would be to find all those other outraged folks who thought they got weeds from the mulch and turning it into a class action lawsuit. Class action lawsuits are very lucrative, but usually only for the attorneys. They drag on for years and when they eventually settle, the final amount may be large, but any individual litigant is likely to get a very small payment. The bulk goes to the law firms. Some of it is in their percentage of the settlement. But there are other costs that go into the case (every piece of paper, every pen, every legal pad, ever phone call, every copy etc has a charge and this comes out of the plaintiffs' money after the attorneys' fees are already deducted). In the end, the "winners" may be able to buy a cup of coffee with their settlement (maybe not at Starbucks, though).

And in case you're thinking that at least the manufacturer would be punished, the settlement would probably be a dollar figure that was very close to the liability insurance limit.

But we only have the OP in the Weeds forum's description of the 'problem' with nothing else to back it up :-)

Please, let's take the lady's statements at face value unless she presents internal consistencies. There's no reason to doubt her, and it's a bit rude, IMHO, to infer that she's lying just because she hasn't yet present watertight proof; also, please do not use my overreaction as a reason to discreditm her.

Rain2Fall

No one is inferring that he/she is lying......only that the tone of the initial post was prone to exaggeration and without visual evidence to support it, one could reasonably assume the extent of the weed problem has also been exaggerated. Taking things at "face value" on the Internet can lead one down some very strange paths........even with photographs to support (which can be easily 'doctored' as well), we can all say whatever we want to say. I think it is just prudent to take a lot of unsubstantiated remarks with a large grain of salt :-)