Read what Kimmsr wrote again. It's right on the mark. "The best mulch material to use is that which you can get at the least cost..." Check things out around you. It's amazing sometimes what you will see and find and get if you ask. All my leaves get blown away in the fall, but a mile down the road my neighbours will gladly give me their leaves. One neighbour has a nice stand of pine trees. He used to rake underneath them and throw out all the needles until I asked him for them. All I do is supply the garbage bags for them and go get the bags. My neighbours on the opposite side of the road use to complain about the seaweed washing up on their beaches but now they don't since I go get it for mulching particular beds and for my compost. I collect used coffee grounds on the way home every day. The owner of the establishment where I get them from cut his organic pick-up fee by 1/2 and is most pleased to see me. The following is mulch which I created with used coffee grounds (UCGs), pine needles, and shredded leaves. The following is a photo of the gardens where it was applied. I never had to weed this area the whole season. :O) Mind you, I weeded before placing the mulch and I don't do the newpaper things to snuff any weed seeds, but placing a good 3 inches of this mulch works well. If the plants were further apart or I was not introducing new plants to the gardens all the time, then I might be inclined to put newspaper down. I must agree with those who speak negatively of landscape/weed fabric. One experience in my parents' gardens showed me that it can be more of a pain than anything else. It provides no food value to the soil and will permit rhizomaceous weeds to creep underneath until they see a way out and by that time your problem is more than you'd like.

Well, here's the thing about where my garden is: It's in the middle of a field that gets sun from dawn til dusk. The soil is rich on the top foot, but still very sandy, and below that it is pure sand... so it does not hold water or nutrients well.. but it has no problem warming up. Most of my warm weather veggies are either in the raised bed I made (the soil gets quite warm in this soil because it is very black and rather shallow.. about 6").. or I have pumpkins and tomatoes in a small bed right on the south side of the house. Since we have a light colored house, the sun beats down and reflects light, making that side of the house very hot.. which is why I'm doing those veggies there, plus my grape vines. Everybody said last year that I wouldn't get tomatoes if I did them from seed... but truth be told, I planted the seeds in mid June and by the end of August I had lots of tomatoes.. this year I did a mixture of transplants and seeds.. and both are doing quite well.

I looked up the pictures and no, it's not balsam apple. The fruit is smaller and very smooth. I see this vine growing in all the wild hedges around here - like you see kudzu further north but not that thick or overwhelming. Marcia, I appreciate you thinking that I know all these plants but remember I'm the one who doesn't know the name of anything! You probably think I'm kidding but apparently all the brain cells I lost in the '70s are the ones where plant names are stored. I just happily plant stuff and hope it grows, then am delighted when it actually blooms. It's a sad system but it works for me. Kate

I forgot how to do that. It was basically another one of my twisted gags. I am so glad someone gave the o.p. a Stern warning about planting Comfrey.It is very easy to plant ,but nearly impossible to get rid of. I only had it in one spot,but the rough look of the plant outweighed the other purported benefits so I decided to remove it which took 2 or three years of backbreaking,heavy shovelling.This was just one small spot it was growing in! So the thought of having a large area covered in it is overwhelming.Major machinery and manpower would be needed to remove that much Comfrey. I have been reading first hand reports from people who have grown it around fruit trees and who claim it to be a miracle elixir. I don't think any real scientific studies have been done on Comfrey's effect on fruit trees. I think maybe it has a lot to do with root structures.Comfrey has deep roots and is an accumulate plant,so would it be as beneficial for a deep rooted Meyer lemon as it would be for a shallower apple tree.Thing is I have a small garden and no room for fruit trees,but if I had a large enough lot I myself would experiment and have 2 identical fruit trees,one surrounded by Comfrey,and the other without Comfrey nearby, and then compare the trees performances over a period of years.To me,Comfrey is a little too hard on the eyes,so I won't have it in my flower beds,but I just got this cool idea to plant some next to my compost pile.First though, I should explore to make sure there isn't a small remnant of it imbedded in the weeds at the back of the yard. I heard this line Booking 14 and thought someone didn't have their morning coffee,so out of confusion I googled it and discovered it's a Comfrey cultivar.Apparantly sometimes people do know what they are talking about even when we don't think they know what they are talking about. I feel extremely humbled.Good feelings to all here.