Mulch is the foundation of any great landscaping endeavor, defending plants from weeds, nutrifying soil and absorbing moisture. Those bags from the hardware store can contain chemicals that harm plants and sterilize soil, but because we make our mulch from 100% organic hardwood, we know we’re a great place to start! We can help you find mulch that excels at fortifying and nurturing vegetables, flowers or even trees.
If you want an immediate sense of what you’ll need, three considerations are most important:
- Nutrition – Most nutrients from mulch can help plants, but some plants benefit further from mulch’s effect on soil’s alkalinity and acidity.
- Aesthetic – Not all mulch looks the same, and color has a major impact on your yard’s appearance.
- Defense – You need to know how well your mulch protects plants from competing weeds.
But how do you know which mulch provides a plant’s favorite nutrients, makes a positive impact on your home’s curb appeal, and offers the most defense from weeds or insects? We’ll talk about all types of mulch and how well they answer these questions.
What Mulch Is Best for Vegetable Gardens?
If you plan to eat from your garden, you may place a low priority on aesthetic in favor of greater nutritional value and defense. While we recommend certain mulches for specific plants, nutrient-rich organic material that decomposes quickly will help your plants the most. As for defense, mulch must be coarse enough to kill weeds, but it must also be fine enough to avoid harming the most delicate plants.
What Mulch Is Best for Apple Trees?
Apple trees thrive in alkaline soil, and hardwood mulch increases soil’s alkalinity. Meanwhile, organic hardwood mulch is our specialty! You can also spread hardwood mulch around peach, pear, plum and nectarine trees, which thrive equally well in basic soil, but hungry plants aren’t picky about the nutrients they receive. While it’s not immediately important, a soil’s pH determines a tree’s long-term health.
What Mulch Is Best for Tomato Plants?
There are two effective mulches in which to grow tomatoes: straw and pine needles. A popular option for protecting produce to eat, straw offers extra defense by taking more time to decompose. It’s also good at keeping mud off plants.
Be wary of hay because it’s full of weed seeds. Not only should you stick to straw that vendors have designated as mulch, but you should sift for seeds through any straw mulch you buy.
Pine needles are also effective because, in addition to providing nutrients through decomposition, pine needles increase soil’s acidity. For tomatoes, soil pH needn’t be too low, but it can benefit from a gentle nudge away from seven.
Tomato plants are delicate, but they thrive in slightly acidic soil.
What Color of Mulch Looks Best?
Many premium mulch vendors, including us, offer three common colors: red, black and brown (no dye). Actually, we offer chocolate instead of black, but the point is that it’s darker than brown mulch. Most vendors offer only these three colors due to the following explicit use cases.
What Mulch Looks Best with a Grey House?
Typically more modern, grey houses with metallic embellishments gain the most curb appeal from black or chocolate mulch. Black mulch invites a lot of contrast into the appearance of your home and yard, tricking your eyes into thinking that all colors are brighter.
What Mulch Looks Best with a Tan House?
Red mulch plays best with a warm, mild color palette. Tan houses benefit the most from red mulch. Whether you’re hoping to increase your home’s curb appeal or make a nice backdrop for photos at an outdoor party, red mulch can be an effective option for a wholesome, rustic look.
What Color of Mulch Is Best for Flower Beds?
While black mulch brightens each flower’s color, purely hardwood mulch that doesn’t even include dye offers enough nutrients and protection to let your flowers speak for themselves. Nothing harmful is in our dye, but we can’t speak for other vendors. The key is to avoid pine among other softwood mulches, as flowers don’t tend to thrive in acidic environments.
Many flowers owe their longevity to alkaline soil.
What Mulch Is Best for Preventing Weeds?
Our premium hardwood mulch keeps weeds from sprouting in two ways: It blocks light from penetrating the soil and smothers any weeds persistent enough to sprout. For an extra kick, use our premium bark mulch. Bark mulch is effective because it also offers protection from above, forming a barrier that keeps seeds from entering soil.
What Mulch Is Safest for Dogs?
If you’re concerned about your furriest family members eating mulch, staying away from inorganic mulch is a good place to start, but our premium hardwood mulch is in big enough pieces to keep your pets from swallowing it. Also, some favor cocoa shells as mulch because of their dark color, but chocolate is harmful to cats and dogs alike. Again, we call some of our mulch “chocolate” only in reference to the mulch’s color.
Our Mulch Goes a Long Way
From our yard in Woodstock, IL, we offer organic hardwood mulch in four color-texture combinations. We understand how important purity is to any yard’s foundation, and we know that our mulch doesn’t just protect your existing plants. It provides an opportunity to cultivate new ones, elevating your home’s curb appeal and possibly allowing you to grow some of your own food.
If you have a yard, garden or flower bed that seems like the perfect home for our premium mulch, we’d be happy to provide recommendations. We sell our mulch by the cubic yard. If you don’t want to deal with geometry and conversions, you can use our calculator to find out how much to order. For more information, please browse the rest of our site or call us at 815-337-1451.
