Fun to hear about your pepper plant DowBright. Yes, that part of me keeps thinking, since the potatoes wanted to be there and do so well, who am I to argue. That back corner has long been a sanctuary for lost and "discarded by others" things. Ms. Potato fits right in that description, though tossed by me. I'm still undecided. That spot was built specifically to have a place a tomato might do well. I've built about half of a raised bed there, using broken concrete chunks from when I had to replace my front sidewalk. Gradually building up the compost of all the extra leaves, eventually the raised bed should be filled. Hopefully I'll get the other half of the walls done over the next couple years. It's hard work and I'm older, so it doesn't go up in a weekend. But it's sure a prefect use for the materials and the plan is to keep things trimmed nearby , after a major cut back, so the sun can come over the fence and have one spot in my garden with at least the most sunlight. Not that it's the recommended amount of sun, but the best that's going to happen here in the PNW ( average 68 days per year of less than 30% cloud cover and at a bit of an angle). Add to that I'm in the city, close neighbors and fences. ... plus mostly all tall old growth type trees. Yeah, I'm growing in the dark here. Thus my lack of growing food type things. Ask me about woodland plants, I've got the answers if I've not forgotten. But food plants I'm really lacking in experience. So today as I kept trying to decide, I went back to check and see what the temperature of the soil in the raised by concrete bed on a rare warm day. Turns out we now know why this is doing so well. It's at 76 degrees, with 78 being the top recommended. If left to grow, I may have pre-baked potatoes real soon. Opps. But great for a tomato plant here where it's generally cool compared to so much of the country. To my surprise I discovered the compost I swept up and dumped on top of the potato planting last night has magically, in the first 12 hours spawned a beautiful clump of dog vomit slime mold ! Most people discovering such a thing the first time are grossed out. It's an acquired taste. LOL It only happens at this time of year here and is rare enough most have not seen it. It will grow and change daily for a few weeks then be gone till next year. Causes no harm and the cool thing is it has the ability to remove heavy metals. Very cool for such a thing in my mind. That's the news from this potato patch for today ! Here is a link that might be useful: dog vomit slime mold

In a forest the litter accumulates on the floor year after year and no one clears it away, although it seldom accumulates to a depth of a foot. I would spread out what you have more evenly, and clear areas around the trees trunks some. Those wood chips might, depending on how dry they get, be a source of fuel if a fire were to move in, but if they are moist it would take more for them to burn. Leaves and pine needles would be of more concern. Wood chips piled up against a tree trunk can hold moisture and allow some insect pests a place to live and work on the tree under the mulch which can then cause the tree to die, eventually. However, I have seen the same thing happen when soil accumulates against a tree trunk.

I'm just surprised you talked him into giving it to you it if was supposed to be reserved for the parks and recreation board. Where you use it depends on how you use it. If you are going to put it directly on top of the ground, then yes, I think stuff will sprout in it. The only way to avoid that would be to put down a layer of something between the ground and the soil/mulch mix. That "something" could be newspapers laid 12-20 pages thick, cardboard, or woven (not perforated) landscape cloth fabric. That layer will keep anything that sprouts in the soil/compost mix from rooting down into the soil underneath up to a point, but you'll still have to pull up whatever sprouts because eventually the roots can work their way down through the newspaper, cardboard or woven cloth landscape fabric. Mulch in and of itself, of course, never means that you'll never have weeds--just that much of the weed activity is suppressed, weeds that sprout in the mulch are easier to pull than those that are in the ground, the ground is kept cooler and the bed has a more finished look. Mulching never stops either. The mulch breaks down and continually replenishes the soil so you keep having to add mulch on top of old mulch. I add mulch to one garden bed or another almost every week during the growing season. I'd go ahead and use the stuff I picked up as mulch immediately because, if you don't, then you run the risk that rain and wind are going to start blowing/washing away the soil in the soil/mulch mix. Wherever you use it, it will keep weeds down somewhat but weeds eventually will sprout and, at that point, you can pull them up before they get big and then go back and get plain wood chips to lay on top of the wood/soil mix. I hope your husband can just relax and tolerate the piles for a while. Creating a nice landscape takes time and all those piles that might seem a little unsightly now are an investment in your yard's future beauty. That's why I call my husband long-suffering...because he tolerates my piles and my experiments and, whenever there is a crisis, he drops what he is doing to shoot a venomous snake, rescue a guinea from the talons of a hawk, cover up tomato plants in the face of an impending frost, repair a fence that a deer has crashed into (but not sailed over!), etc. Sometimes I think non-gardening spouses have to be the most patient people on earth. Of course, he gets to be the "good guy" too, carrying tons of excess produce to work to share with his co-workers, which makes him a "hero" in their eyes. Dawn

Just three years ago, where my house and yard is now was just a field of weeds. On my half acre lot, I've mulched with between 500 and 600 bags of leaves from neighbors, ground up, and applied thickly to growing beds, spread regularly and thinly on the lawn. In some of the areas where I wasn't going to pay much attention to for a few years, I put down a thick layer of newspaper before piling on the leaf mulch. In areas where I am actively gardening, I just pile on the leaves each fall and winter(already started collecting leaves this year). I already have absolutely no weed "problem" in my garden areas. Yes, the mulch keeps down almost all of the weeds. Also, some weeds sprout and come through the mulch. The advantage of the mulch is that the soil underneath never is hard, dry, and impossible to remove weeds from. I walked through my garden often that first year in particular, to remove weeds when small and well BEFORE they can ever go to seed. Anything that can grow from any small piece of the subject weed or that included seeds(along borders, etc., I put in a trash can for removal from my property. More benign things go in the compost pile. But they are very easy to pull from well mulched soil, and there just aren't many of them. The casual way I deal with weeding is an indication that just the organic mulch is all I need. I have seen, heard, and experienced horrible things with landscape fabric, and I won't subject myself to that.