missylin, I use 3-4 sheets of newspaper under my mulch. If it's windy, you'll need to have the hose handy so that you can wet it as you lay it down (otherwise it blows away). Then I add 3 inches of mulch on top of the newspaper. I've used the newspaper under pine bark, shredded bark, wood chips and pine straw...never had a problem. It just adds another protective layer to help prevent weeds. It will decay in about a year and will also help enrich the soil. I also add it to my compost pile. One note... no matter how much mulch I get, I always wish I had a little more (for around a tree, or back behind a camelia bush, etc.). Good luck,
Kathy

Thanks, Kathy! I'll have a hose handy. I've mulched before but only used red mulch or cypress mulch by the bag. It's amazing how far it does NOT go. Since I cna't get pine straw, I should use the mini pine bark then? I can just not recycle my newspaper. The only problem is I've only found the mini pine bark one place so far, and it's sold by the yard. I cna't figure out how I'd get it to my beds. :( I like the bags of stuff becuase heavy though they are, they can be hauled. I have a friend whose pick up we'll use, but I don't know if it's safe to drive the pick up on the lawn. I could drive around the side and back of my neighbor's house to get to the back bed, but who knows if it would go over a sewer pipe or sprinkler pipe? How do y'all do this who buy it by the yard? I have no idea. ??? Thanks!

We use the finest PB we can find up here in the North. I'd say it's 1/2" +/- in diameter. We also use some newspaper under it. As too how we get it... a pick-up truck with a normal size bed holds about 2 - 2.5 yds and cover it with a tarp to get it home. Find a friend/buy a wheel barrow and get to work. 8-)

Thanks for this input, Lilynut. I answered, and my reply was rejected! The mulch I found is not shredded, but mini pine bark nuggets. They looked about two inches on average in size, but some were smaller. Does that sound okay? Good idea about the tarp, would old bedsheets do? I use them to cover plants if a freeze is forecast. My next door neighbor has a wheelbarrow, and a friend's husband has a pick up I'm hoping we can borrow. Thanks so very much. I hope I have enough to work as a tarp. That's such a good idea. Thanks again. Lin

You can use anything for a tarp so long as it is strong enough not to rip with the strength of the wind on the way home. The faster you drive, the stronger the wind.

I love mulch, LOVE MULCH! I use newspaper under all of my pots and around the edges of my beds. I use 4 to as many as 10 layers of paper. If your beds are big enough to use newspaper in without it being so hard to place around the plants, then it would work great. I'm in the process of getting by beds mulched as I can afford to buy a bag. With the price of gas, everything is going so high that I try to get a few bags at a time. I use the the mini nuggets from Walmart inside my pots. It's very small,a lot smaller than Home Depot's. WM is about a half inch. I really like it. I think I'm going to get the bigger to go in my beds. I think. I put down a little of the mini in one bed and it looks good and so far it hasn't washed at all and we've had a few good rains since then. So, I guess I'll try both to see which I like the best.

Since I've put the mini nuggets in all my pots of daylilies, I water half as much. I can actually go 2 days without watering. It really makes a bunch of difference. The only thing I've noticed is a slight yellowing of my leaves. I was told to add a little nitrogen to the pots, so I'm going to do this sometime this week. If anyone else grows in pots, what do you use???

Hope some of this info is useful. Mona

Wow, Mona. That is a lot of newspaper, four to ten layers. I would have to save newspaper forever to get that much for my big bed in back. I have done it before in one of my small beds on the side of my house. If I want to mulch before summer, my only chance is next weekend, as my friend with the truck is going away for six months after that, so I'll only have a week's worth of paper. Maybe I can use my neighbor's as well. Last year I used newspaper on the bed on the north side of my house. I was told that it makes it more durable to do that. The layers stick together better. That worked well for me.. But it was small bed. I will call around tomorrow, but so far I've only found one nursery, 45 min. away that carries the small pine bark. I have not seen it at Lowes, Home Depot, etc. HD only has the big nuggets. i'll call more tomorrow. For my front bed, i think the mini will look pretty. Daylilies are delicate looking and I think the small mulch will look better. When you say the bigger, do you mean regular size pine bark nuggets? I had never thought of mulching pots. I will have to try that. I don't have any daylilies in pots, but other things. Maybe I'll use the bigger mulch around my Magnolia tree in the same bed. Do you thik that would look okay? If I can't get the truck for the mini pine bark I don't know what I'll do. It is only sold in one place that I've found, and not by the bag. Do you think a bunch of sheets would work for a tarp.I read Lilynut's post wrong. I don't have anything to cover the mulch. I was thinking a tarp to cover the bottom of the truck. I would not know what to use to cover the mulch. Maybe my friends have somethign already for their truck. I'll email tonight and ask. Thanks so much. Thanks again for this info., Mona.

One tip that you might try when laying down newspapers - dump a bunch of newspapers in a bucket and add water. It is so easy to fold and bend to any shape needed when they are already wet and they don't blow in the wind.

Ann

Thanks Farmer Bell! My buckets are pretty small. I'll have to think what I could use that might be a little bigger than my 2 buckets so that I can wet more newspaper at hte same time. The buckets are a great idea. Would hosing the newspaper down a little do as well?. By the way, I guess the wetting down will only work if I do it right before I put down the mulch? It would be easier to do, if I did it earlier in the week, so if i have help laying the mulch,(as it's not in bags) the person or persons would not have to wait for the newspaper to be wet and laid down. But I guess the newspaper would dry and blow away by then, right? Too bad I did not keep all the big tree roots and rocks I found in the holes we dug. That would have held the newspaper down til the mulch came. Ideas? Thanks.,

For the last several years I have used cardboard under my
mulch. I get huge thich sheets from work and cut to fit in the garden. This has saved me alot of money and work. Several of the beds haven't been mulched for 2 years now and still look great. The only drawback is that mulching hills or an incline is difficult, mulch slides right off.

Other areas in the garden that aren't planted yet, or the rows of the garden, I use old carpet. Don't uese berber as this tends to run.

Thanks for the tip of wetting the newpaper first. great idea!!!

Hi missy- I never have enough newspaper here, so I save all my out-of-date daylily catalogs - the ones without colored pictures - as groundcover under the actual mulch. You can throw them down as is, or open out flat, but no need to tear them apart. They do a really good job of keeping the weeds out. I do use pine straw on top. Mini pine bark nuggets are great also, but don't last as long before having to be redone. Ida

missylin,

Hmmm must of been thinking and typing in diffrent languages in the earlier post. The tarp/sheet is used to keep what you are hauling from blowing away while transporting it home.

That was a help. I've been reading about lasagna gardening and this type of mulching. It's going to be a lot of work w/the newspapers because it's a long strip and plants scattered throughout now, but HAVE to do something soon.

Do you take out the colored ink pages of the newspaper?

Mine are going to have to be content with leafy compost on top of the paper as the amount of cypress and cedar bark mulch is too expensive for the quantities I'd need, and you need tons of it to make it deep enough, so I'm using that sparingly. It does look a lot neater, for sure.

Our city sells mulch and compost, and I did risk it with their compost but no way am I buying their mulch, even though the other can be risky, too. I don't know if I can get pine bark mulch here or not, would be good for my new, expensive rhododendrons. I'll see if HD has some just for that.