We get free composted leaf mulch from the city, dark and pretty good, except for the occasional piece of trash we find in it. No bugs, weed seeds or much of anything to complain about. We always put it on in the fall and with a layer of mushroom compost under it, by spring we have awesome soil. They also have wood chips, and we get that too, to put on our beds in the spring and summer. When we use fresh wood chips we always make sure to fertilize as they can pull nitrogen out of the soil as they decompose. Best is to get partially decomposed chips but that isn't always available. There has never been a problem with poison ivy wood in there, tho I have heard of that with fresh chips from the utility companies, who will sometimes dump their trucks on your property for you if you ask. The stuff we get looks so much like cypress mulch when it is on the garden that we have stopped buying the bagged stuff altogether. They load it in our truck for us but there is no delivery. On the other hand, we got some free stuff from another city source once that was awful, it was dead. When it got dry, it was hard and cracked, no life to it at all. It took a couple of years to get the stuff to where it had any good organic matter back into it. Besides, we had to load it ourselves. Never went back there. Sandy

Thanks! As a hypothetical question, how do wood chips suppress weeds? If I had wood chips, should I be putting down newspaper/cardboard/landscape fabric under them too? I thought they supressed weeds by creating a surface, an upper/top surface, that any seeds that blew onto it couldn't grow on, because the surface was wood. But I wonder if you're saying that the weeds I need to worry about are coming from underneath, up through the mulch? In which case, is there anything about wood chips that stops that better than compost? Like the robbing-nitrogen-from-the-soil stuff I've heard about wood chips?

bboy... Look at it this way... How many contracting services work at homes without restrooms? Lawn guys are "in and out" - a quick mow and they can leave to find a restroom at some gas station. Plumbers, etc., are in the house in most cases, either with a key, or scheduled to be there with owners home. Other contractors are there for a few days and rent Porta-Potties... But tree guys are on site, often for hours, and half the time, homewowners are not there. The equipment is too big to pack up and roll to a gas station every time a worker has to pinch a loaf. My guess, is that the upper end of the price range guys leave during breaks, and the budget services need to stay on site and use their trucks. In my case, I don't use a chipper, although some of my pruning projects are extensive. But I make sure that anyone working for me has transportation, and expect them to report to the work site in their car so they can leave at their leisure.

I'm just surprised you talked him into giving it to you it if was supposed to be reserved for the parks and recreation board. Where you use it depends on how you use it. If you are going to put it directly on top of the ground, then yes, I think stuff will sprout in it. The only way to avoid that would be to put down a layer of something between the ground and the soil/mulch mix. That "something" could be newspapers laid 12-20 pages thick, cardboard, or woven (not perforated) landscape cloth fabric. That layer will keep anything that sprouts in the soil/compost mix from rooting down into the soil underneath up to a point, but you'll still have to pull up whatever sprouts because eventually the roots can work their way down through the newspaper, cardboard or woven cloth landscape fabric. Mulch in and of itself, of course, never means that you'll never have weeds--just that much of the weed activity is suppressed, weeds that sprout in the mulch are easier to pull than those that are in the ground, the ground is kept cooler and the bed has a more finished look. Mulching never stops either. The mulch breaks down and continually replenishes the soil so you keep having to add mulch on top of old mulch. I add mulch to one garden bed or another almost every week during the growing season. I'd go ahead and use the stuff I picked up as mulch immediately because, if you don't, then you run the risk that rain and wind are going to start blowing/washing away the soil in the soil/mulch mix. Wherever you use it, it will keep weeds down somewhat but weeds eventually will sprout and, at that point, you can pull them up before they get big and then go back and get plain wood chips to lay on top of the wood/soil mix. I hope your husband can just relax and tolerate the piles for a while. Creating a nice landscape takes time and all those piles that might seem a little unsightly now are an investment in your yard's future beauty. That's why I call my husband long-suffering...because he tolerates my piles and my experiments and, whenever there is a crisis, he drops what he is doing to shoot a venomous snake, rescue a guinea from the talons of a hawk, cover up tomato plants in the face of an impending frost, repair a fence that a deer has crashed into (but not sailed over!), etc. Sometimes I think non-gardening spouses have to be the most patient people on earth. Of course, he gets to be the "good guy" too, carrying tons of excess produce to work to share with his co-workers, which makes him a "hero" in their eyes. Dawn