I have my garden covered with about an 8 inch layer of leaves. My plants are in tubes that reach to the dirt level. This seams to really work well. I can't tell you whether it is better or this is a good year. If you mulch, the pepper plant stem has an increased chance of succumbing to damp-off even a large plant. Make sure you stem dries between watering. Pepper and egg plants are in 5 gallon bottomless buckets for roots to pass. watermelon are in bottomless one gallon food tins. blueberry plants are in 28 in bottomless boxes. Most of this won't apply to you, but I have found the mulching to work very well. See pick

Thank you for the info & link. Justaguy, you might want to reconsider your position on nematodes, as I did apply them this spring, and I am certain they made quite a difference, by comparing my garden to that of my neighbors. Kissmsr, I thank you for your diligent reply to many posts on this forum. I have gained much knowledge from reading this forum over the past few months, & you seem to have many of the answers. I among many others have benefitted from your experience, though i wonder how you have the time to do it all!

Put them into water and look with a magnifying glass to see if you see anything wiggling. You should be able to see them.

Earthworms are the most favorite food of moles, although they will eat almost any insect including grubs. Nematodes need to be put into your soil when it is warm and moist, like mid June around here and that is really too late for them to be effective for this years crop of grubs. You could put Nematodes into your soil in mid September so the could get to next years crop of grubs. Keeping in mind that gardeners have been trying to eliminate moles since at least the 16th century and the moles are still around there may be little, to nothing, we can do about them except coexist. The only people that are having any real success with mole control are those that sell you products to control them, that really do not work.