Just keep layering on the composted leaves ...

I would wait until the weather gets cooler, then make use of those leaves - the ticks won't be able to become active in cooler weather. Since leaves are your most abundant resource right now, I would look to separating the larger bits from the leaf mold. The un-composted leaves shred quite easily with a lawn mower and make a good mulch. The leaf-mold is already in a good state. Dry out the leaf mold, and put it containers/bags for the winter. This will stall the composting. When dry, it is basically comparable to compost, and a great mulch. It can also be turned into the soil as is, or dry. But since you're looking for mulch, keeping it dry all winter will be your best bet.

Next year, get hold of the local tree-trimming crew and get some wood chips dumped into a corner of the yard. Do it in the late spring - midsummer when there will be green leaves shredded with the chips. Let it sit all summer through next winter. Early in the following spring, start sifting it through something like hardware cloth. You'll have more mulch (compost) than you'll know what to do with... for free (well, for a few days work of sifting.) The larger wood chips that you'll sift out have use as chips for many purposes, and as a 'brown' material which you can remix with grass clippings and food scraps for the next year's pile.

How big is the area that you need to mulch? Did you spend "hundreds and hundreds" of dollars to mulch it this last time? Or did you get the wood chips for free?

What reason do you have for not using wood chips to mulch "Most plants"? If it's the common urban legend about wood chips "tying up nitrogen" in the soil, it does not apply to mulch - it only happens if you mix up the wood chips into the soil.

Autumn leaves are, of course, awesome free mulch, but most people find they perform better if shredded (unless they are small leaves). If, as you say, your soil is already rich, there's no reason at all to till in the leaves - just keep layering on the mulch and topping it off as needed throughout the growing season. Worms and microbiota will take it from there.

The area is about 1,000 SF, not including the flower beds.

Nothing is free around here, unless you make it yourself. Ground wood mulch is sold by the tree cutting companies at a premium. We spent somewhere around $400 mulching our extensive property last year.

The soil is very rich as previous owners put an obvious large amount of work into it.

for upkeep, in the wooded part of the US, ground leaves are hard to beat. For my garden I use a rule of thumb of two leaf bags per 4X12 bed per year. I suggest you reconsider the weeds. Yes, there are seeds, but under the mulch are also many many little critters who have gizzards and eat small weed seeds. Earthworms and slugs of course, but also several beetles that specialize in seed eating. I have never had a large weed bloom whenever I mulched with weeds.

Oh I was going to amend with the weed compost, I just don't expect it to supress weeds much.

I have been using free mixed species wood chips for many years. I deal with two arborists in the area, whom I can trust to bring me a good, clean load when they are working nearby.

Whether any mulch is an effective "weed" barrier depends o nnhow thick the mulch is. How effective any mulch is at helping keep soil moisture levels up depend on how thick that mulch is. An inch or two of any material is not enough to do much. To be even somewhat effective a mulch needs to be at minimum of 4 inches thick and even 6 inches thick is better, according to 9 years of research done by two people at Michigan State University as reported in an issue of Fine Gardening magazine.

Mulch materials can be free. It does not have to be purchased at a garden shoppe. Most people throw out perfectly good mulch material often paying someone to haul that away and then spending large sums buying something to replace what they threw away. Wood chips may be available free from tree trimmers since they must pay to dump them in a licensed disposal yard. Shortly, for many of us, there will be a lot of leaves available, for free. One problem is that some people are not too careful about what is put in those leaf bags.

kimmq is kimmsr

That ground hardwood did not need to be thick to be effective. A couple inches made an impermeable barrier - it is tough heavy stuff. The leaves on the other hand will need to be very thick.

Send the wife out to find a second job so you can buy some mulch next spring :)

For paths, cardboard with chopped leaves on top work well as a weed barrier and last thru the season if applied in the spring. It may take awhile to collect enough cardboard to cover 1000 sq. ft. so start collecting now.

I just use chopped leaves and grass clippings a mulch in my raised beds around the plants.

There you go!