For as small as our lot is we have quite a bit of mulch. It surrounds about 80% of our house plus we have two large patches in our back yard and several trees that are supposed to have mulch around them as well but don't currently. The previous owners of our house had flowers haphazardly placed and they would pop up in the most random of places. Plus one of our large trees in the mulch is dead (they still haven't come to pick it up yet) and another bush is way to large for its space and blocks the windows it is in front of. Basically things are a mess.
We had a mulch and landscaping guy come out this weekend to assess the situation. We are still awaiting his estimates on prices but he did mention that they usually charge $80/cubic yard to install new mulch. Based on my calculation I estimated that we have at least 10X that much mulch if not more. Even though we haven't received the prices yet Sarah and I have mostly decided that we are going to do things ourselves. Sarah and her sister ripped out a bunch of flowers and plants yesterday. I've begun the process of moving some of the mulch that we have in random places in the backyard around the trees that don't have any mulch. I need to pick up a spade shovel so that I can adequately edge around the trees so that the mulch doesn't overflow into the street first. Add to this that it is basically impossible for both of us to work on this project at the same time because of the twins and we're looking at a probably several weekend project. Who even knows if we will be able to plant new stuff this year or if it will just remain bare. The whole situation stresses me out.
I sure do wish that I could be there to help you...working outdoors de-stresses me. You know, trees do not need mulch, especially when it's used to crowd the bark at their bases. (Flowers or shrubs with shallow roots do.) I'm sure that 1/2 of the price of the estimate for your mulch is for manual labor. I've had trucks deliver several cubic yards and dump it in my driveway for much less, but it's a pain to shovel it into a wheelbarrow, move it, and re-shovel it around the plants. I like getting 2 or 3 cubic feet bags of mulch and leave them on the side of my driveway until I take time to put them out. You can do as much or as little as you have time for. (Or I guess you could move the bags into your garage for awhile if you have a bothersome home owners' association.) I don't always get more mulch out from year to year until late Summer so that I can spend my time fussing with the flowers or just enjoying Summer! Mulch is really cheap in September. :-) The flowers don't care how much mulch you have on them during the warmer weather as long as you keep them watered. Now in the winter...they really appreciate their blanket of mulch. I know because they told me so... :D auntie 502
ReplyDeleteWe had our tree and large bush removed today. They are coming next week to remove the stumps. This leaves a large open space in our mulch at the front of our house which I think we are going to reduce in size. This should help reduce our mulch upkeep in the future but will require us to grow grass. I think we're going to put smaller shrub-like plants in the mulch in the fall.
DeleteAs far as the rest of the mulch goes, since we are making so many changes to the mulch around the house for now we are just going to focus on surrounding all of the trees for now which is basically like starting from scratch since they are currently bare.