Mulching for Winter

Here's a before and after comparison of the mulching Meredithe and I completed today. Technically the pictures are of two different beds, the before is of the North bed, the after of the South bed, but you get the idea. The smaller clippings that you can see piled to the right in the before picture were the most useful, having been clipped this spring and summer and decomposing the most. Meredithe put the best stuff underneath our struggling gardenia and azalea bushes. The remainder of the mulch was the smaller stuff from the bottom of the brush pile that had been sitting undisturbed since the end of March. It's mostly broken down blackberry debris and stems of large grasses from when we first cleared the garden area. We were running a little short of the really good broken down material so we raked out some of the dead taller grasses from the longer brush area you can see in the top left of the before picture. We were able to cover both beds with about 1-2" of fairly well broken down mulch material without having to bring in anything from off of the farm. We've considered adding pine straw on top to ensure we've got a good 2" of mulch evenly spread across the beds. It would make them look more uniform and aesthetically pleasing as well. We have pine straw on farm obviously, but we may bring in a few bales from off farm too, maybe next week.