With one and half beds of cool flowers planted in early spring, I needed to put down some sort of a mulch. After their planting, we had at least four days of warm weather with highs in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Summertime weather in spring. The soil was drying out around these new flowers. Watering twice a day with hauling the hose over to the second garden, plugging in the pump, and opening the valve to the tank was just too exhausting. If I was going to do work on these sunny, beautiful days, I was doing something that would last in benefiting my cool flowers long term. I decided to mulch my cool flowers, with leaves and wood mulch.
Mulching with Leaves After Planting Cool Flowers
Knowing leaves can add nutrients to the soil, as well as acting as a mulch, I figured why not try to add leaves to my current bed of cool flowers. This bed consisted of delphinium, Sweet William, snapdragons and perennial yarrow.
With owning some woods, I drove the tractor through the trees on a road in the woods, raked up some leaves, and loaded them up into the tractor bucket. I have no idea how I drove that tractor with the beginner’s driving skills. Let’s just say, I did not drive back through the woods again.
I transported the leaves to the cool flower garden. To cover the soil, I grabbed an armload of leaves and then shook them over top of the current cool flowers. The next day, I checked on them. With the heavy winds and dry weather, half the leaves blew away across our yard. The few that was left did make their way between the plants, which was neat to see.
I didn’t mind how it turned out, so I did the same process again the next afternoon. After filling a whole 4’ x 28’ flower bed with leaves on top of the plants, I said enough. With more sunlight, I was seeing how many sticks I was putting on my beds. I also ran into the problem where the leaves were just covering the plants. Assuming the wind would take some of the leaves away, which it already did as I was adding them, I let it go to check again on the third day.
And here is where I decided I never will plan to add leaves to plant again. The plants I uncovered the day before . . . leaves were blown on top of them, again. The yarrow had most of the leaves blown off of them. Any leaves that were left, I figured yarrow is a perennial, so I’m hoping it just pops up through any leftover leaves. Snapdragons were all relatively tall, so the leaves settled between most of them. Some, I had to dig up being much smaller. The Sweet William, I know it grows up through grasses and weeds, so I wasn’t as concerned with these flowers. Delphiniums, I have no idea. I never grew them before. I moved all the leaves away from them, and am just hoping for the best.
How to Add Leaves as Mulch in Spring?
For those that do want to use leaves as mulch . . .
1 Rake Leaves
2 Move to Garden Space
3A Grab a handful and sprinkle over top of plants. Remove any leaves that landed on flowers
3B Place leaves in empty space around the plants. Make sure plants can still receive sunlight.
4 So leaves don’t blow away, cover with a frost cloth or row cover.
Adding Wood Mulch After Planting Cool Flowers
After having such a struggle with adding leaves to cool flowers, I decided to move on to adding mulch to plants. My husband likes the method of using a pitch fork, or potato digging fork in my case, to sprinkle mulch onto the flower bed, even over top of plants. In the moment, I thought I would try this with my cool flowers.
These flowers were planted a day or two before mulching, so they were not established plants from a 6-inch pot. Most of the flowers were grown in 72-cells or 36-cells. Very young plants. This was my mistake. The plants my husband mulched over came from at least 6-inch pots. They already had their flowers. Not fully grown, but rather established as a nursery plant.
Putting mulch over top of bachelor’s buttons, feverfew and carnations . . . whoops. So many had too much mulch over top. As soon as I placed the soil over top, I ended up moving the mulch away. Although the plants are doing good. I did not like this process what so ever. I become nervous, wondering if I was able to uncover all the plants. The actual bed doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing. This process was not for me.
How to Sprinkle Mulch onto Cool Flowers?
This method does work as long as the plants are uncovered as soon as mulch is sprinkled on top and around them. Here’s how the steps in how to do it.
1 Make a pile of mulch near the planted flowers.
2 Use a digging fork to pick up some mulch.
3 Shake the digging fork for the mulch to loosely cover the flower bed.
4 Find flowers that are partly covered, or fully covered. Move the mulch away from the young plants.
Mulching First, Planting Later- My Favorite Method
After trying out two methods where I planted first and mulched second, I wanted to do the opposite. I raked the flower bed, followed by adding mulch to that cleared bed. Once the mulch was added, I planted in the native soil under the mulch. This mulch layer is not much, and will be needed to be added to here later. It is such a great start, though.
The mulch keeps the soil hydrated, rather than the summerlike sun evaporating the water in the top few inches of the soil. It should also keep the weeds down for the beginning growing season.
It is rather reminiscent of how I’ve always planted flowers. Granted, before these flowers were for bedding landscape areas, but it took me back to my roots of using mulch to suppress weeds. This made it entirely pleasurable in planting these flowers. This is the method I will be using from now on for cut flowers that I want naturalize or are perennials.
In these beds, I planted strawflower, rudbeckia, extra bachelor’s button, Buplerum, and other cool flowers.
Buying Mulch Ahead
Believe it or not, the mulch I used for this spring project was bought last June, about 9 months earlier. It was on clearance for under $1 per bag. We didn’t know what exactly we would be using it for in the garden, but we knew we would use it.
Mulch kept in the bag has lasted. It may not have its same darker color, but I don’t need the color. Some will say to not use any colors mulch in the garden. I use it for my bedding flowers, so I’m comfortable using it for my cut flowers too.
How to Mulch Before Planting
1 Rake rocks and clumps of grass from native soil.
2 Add mulch from bag or wheel barrow
3 Use rake or digging fork to spread mulch, 2 inches thick- just a small layer enough to cover the native soil
4 Plant flowers into the native soil and mulch
Choose Your Mulching Strategy
Although I love using landscape fabric or newspapers for weed prevention, sometimes it is best use mulch. But what type of mulch works the best for you and what is the best method to applying it? For me, I like using mulch and applying it before planting. It made the whole spring planting so much easier, and quite enjoyable. It made this spring gardening relaxing.
The other methods, although they can work, they just didn’t suit me. They could suit you. It is not what is the best method for mulching out there, but what are the choices, which do you want to try, and you can reflect and decide what you want to use on your garden.
I find that many professional farmers or growers have their method they prefer that they like to teach people, but there are multiple ways to prevent weeds. Maybe for others, they like using leaves for mulch. I didn’t. That doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind, or tweak what I do. I may end up liking using leaves as mulch in the fall. Maybe I would like planting directly into a flower bed that has the leaves placed down first. It is important to find what works for you and provides you energy through gardening.
Share to Pinterest
