Hi Courtney,

Welcome to the Oklahoma Gardening Forum and congratulations on the purchase of your first home.

First, there is no need to apologize and there are no silly questions. Every single one of us started out as 'new gardeners' once upon a time, you know. (Admittedly, for some of us the 'new' part was very long ago. Hee hee.)

I don't know which part of Oklahoma you live in, but common cool season flowers that are cold-hardy in much of the state include pansies, violas, dianthus, snapdragons, ornamental cabbage, ornamental kale, and dusty miller (grown for its silvery white foliage). There are others that can handle most of our cold weather, but those are the ones most commonly seen in nurseries and garden centers.

As far as keeping mulch in place, that can be very difficult depending on the topography of the land around your house and also depending on how high your winds tend to get. In most of the state, you may find yourself fighting northerly winds that can occasionally be very strong. In general, it is easier to keep mulch in place if you do two things: Buy mulch that is finely ground and in smaller pieces. Larger chunks tend to blow around/wash away more. Granted, larger pieces are heavier than smaller pieces, but it doesn't seem to help keep them in place. Secondly, keep the mulch moist...not dripping wet, but moist enough that the pieces will clump together a little.

If you are in a very exposed location, such as on a hilltop or a barren stretch of grassland with no nearby windbreaks (natural or manmade), then keeping mulch in place will be a lot harder. You can tack down black netting (like the netting sold to throw over fruit trees to keep birds off the fruit) using landscape staples. The netting will help hold the mulch in place and isn't too terribly obvious. You can mulch with something heavier like stone or lava rack. (With clay soil, it is better to use a bark mulch or shredded leaves because they feed the soil as they break down, but if you live in a very windy, exposed location, rock maybe the only good option.)

Also, some types of wood mulch stay in place better than others. If you can find pine needles/pine straw mulch, it stays in place really well. I'm partial to cedar but use cypress too. Pine bark mulch seems to me to be one that blows around too easily.

Depending on where you live, some cities and counties grind up tree trimmings/leaves and allow residents to pick them up free, or for a nomial fee, and that can be a great source of mulch. If you are in a rural area, your local electric co-op may either do their own tree trimming or hire contractors to do it for them, and they can be a great source of free tree-trimming mulch.

Once you have more plants in place, even the plants themselves will help hold the mulch in place. And, if you are in a windy location where it is going to be impossible to keep mulch in its place, you may want to switch to an evergreen groundcover. There are some groundcovers that work well with bulbs and other perennials.

Good luck,

Dawn

Hi Courtney,

welcome to this forum. You have already been greeted by the BEST informer on this forum! Really, you can take the advice Dawn gives you, and go far with it. She is a walking breathing encyclopedia.

Christmas is near. Trees will be discarded in a little over a month. Collect some, trim them up, and lay the branches on your ground, after you applied the mulch. Most places, this works great.

You may also put some radish seeds out, sprinkle them widely. As the little plants emerge, they will help hold stuff in place, or even stop leaves that otherwise would blow across.

I find perennial plants not cut down all the way, or sticks pushed in to the ground to help keep mulch from blowing away.
Good luck.

Moni

Thanks to both of you! I'm very excited to get started!

welcome to the forum. i don't know much about gardening either, but dawn and others have really been helpful. i have often collected grass clippings that people put along the curb in the summer. it makes a good mulch and doesn't blow away. i didn't do too much of that this year but hope my leaves will work, but they do tend to blow away.

Jessaka, if you can chop those leaves up some, they will be less likely to fly away.

Mowing works, chipper works, put them in a barrel and use a weed eater works.

Good luck with those leaves.

Moni

I've been collecting leaves for awhile. I watch for people to set the bags out on the curb and then I go up to their door and ask if I can take them. One house had about 15 bags (orange jack-o-lantern bags) of leaves that they set out on the curb after halloween was over. Some of my neighbors have started calling me when they have some, because our trash collection service limits us to 5 trash containers or 10 bags.

I dump each bag out on the ground and DH runs over the leaves with the riding lawn mower that has a bagger. This is quite efficient, and chops them up nicely. Then I put this directly on top of the ground in my flower beds. It acts as mulch for awhile, but breaks down VERY quickly. In fact, one time I didn't have time to distribute it all so we just piled it up in one spot and by the time I got to it, it had mostly composted itself.

Also if you call tree trimming services in your area, they may let you make some arrangements to get some chipped or ground wood from them for free. I tried calling the large trimming service that works for the city, and they were a little rude in saying no, but a smaller company said, "Sure! Come out to our lot and you can take all you want!" If you're really lucky, they'll offer to dump a good quantity somewhere on your property but I haven't found anyone who will, lately. Bear in mind, though, that if you plant seed where wood is breaking down, it will be harder for the seed to germinate. This is why wood chips are so effective as mulch. A lot of the weed seeds won't germinate either -- although they're more persistent than things you plant and will eventually prevail. --Ilene