The Best & Worst Times To Spread Mulch - Colony Supply Center

Skip to content

Summer is here, and that means flowers, sunshine, and plenty of time enjoying your yard. You know your garden and flower beds won’t be perfect without a lot of work: weeding, cleaning up the beds, and mulching. But when exactly should you mulch? Here are a few quick tips on the best (and worst) times to mulch:

Best

When the weather is consistently warm.

Mulch is designed to slow soil’s warming and help with nutrient retention. If you add the mulch too early, before your soil has warmed on its own, you lose the warming benefit that mulch provides. If you add it too late, the mulch loses its chance to help retain nutrients that the soil already had. Early May is a pretty reliable sweet spot.

After weeding.

Once you’ve cleaned out those flower beds from obnoxious weeds, spread your mulch. If you put mulch down before weeding, it will just allow the weeds to grow more.

After a spring shower.

Again, because of the primary purpose of mulch (moisture retention), after rain is prime-time for mulching. If it has not rained for a while and the weather is staying warm, make sure you water the plants and soil before mulching so that there is moisture present.

>>Not sure how much mulch you need? Try our mulch calculator!>>

Worst

Before your perennials emerge.

If you haven’t seen your geraniums or lavender pop up yet, you’ll want to hold off on putting down mulch. Putting mulch down on your perennials before they have emerged will bury them!

Before stripping away existing mulch.

A huge amount of mulch won’t benefit your plants. Aim for around 3 inches so that your plants will have support, but still room to grow. You’ll want to get rid of some of the top layer of mulch from last year before putting down the new mulch to keep this depth consistent!

Quality Mulch & Landscape Supplies in Beallsville, MD

If you’ve gone through these suggestions and realized that now’s the perfect time for you to get mulching, contact the experts at Colony Supply Center today for all of your landscape supply and delivery needs!

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious 3 Essential Lawn Care Tools to Check in Spring for Smooth Summer Lawn CareNext PostNext Is Leafgro Beneficial for My Garden?

Categories

• Firewood
• Lawn Care Tips

Tags

• compost
• gardening tips
• landscaping
• lawn care
• lawn care tips
• lawn fertilizer
• lawn tools
• leafgro
• mulch
• small engine repair
• spring tips
• summer lawn care
• weed control