Gardening & Landscaping
Happyappy
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Best place to buy mulch?
Disclaimer: I know nothing about gardening/landscaping.
Is the best place to buy mulch a big box store or somewhere else? Should I get rid of the river rocks, or put the mulch right on top?
My in-laws suggested leaving the rocks to help with drainage, but then won't the mulch mix with it when I go to plant some hostas in the spring? I may also plant some more flowers in the spring. Everything else is either bulbs or bushes.
Thanks!
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Re: Best place to buy mulch?
Don't mix rocks and mulch together. I'd remove the rocks and whatever fabric you have below then replace with mulch. We just did that on our front flower beds.
How much mulch do you need? If it's a small amount it's easiest to just buy a few bags like you mentioned. But if you need a lot then you can order it by the cubic yard from a landscaping company and have it dropped off on your driveway.
We have a truck, and go to our local garden center and purchase mulch by the 'scoop', they use a backhoe and dump the yardage into the back. It's less expensive than the pre-bagged mulch, and the pieces are larger. Some garden centers deliver for free if you buy a certain amount.
The finer the pieces and darker the mulch, the more it's going to cost. It just depends on how much you want to spend and what your personal preferences are.
I just read your blog, your beds look great! I love hostas but HATE river rock.
I wonder if I put an ad on Craigslist for free river rocks, but they must haul away, if I would get out of that task? LOL.
I have no clue how much mulch we need. Our flower bed in the back yard has red mulch, which I like. We have two flower beds in front. One is a good size, the other is just along the garage.
I don't think a CL add like that would be out of line. If you have plants in there you want to keep you might want to move/protect them though because it can be pretty difficult to get all of the rocks out without harming the plants. We spent a good 3 hours on our hands and knees picking them up by hand and dumping them in 5 gallon buckets (transferring to a wheel barrow).
Go out and measure the sf of your beds. The typical bagged mulch is 2 cubic feet of mulch which would cover 12 sf at 2" deep or 8 sf at 3" deep. Or if you're going to buy it from a garden center they measure in cubic yards. 1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feet = 13.5 bags of 2 cubic feet.
It is almost always cheaper to buy it per cubic yard but you need to have a truck or have it delivered. For example mulch is often on sale around here for 4 - 2 cubic foot bags for $10 whereas a cubic yard typically is $20. So you can get 27 cubic feet for $20 or 8 cubic feet for $10.
HTH!