Mid-Atlantic Gardening: October...blooms?, 1 by claypa

claypa wrote:
All I can tell you is what I do, and I don't know if it's right or not - but bulbs are my favorite, so I clean the beds as best as I can and plant whatever more bulbs I can squeeze in (and afford). All the leaves are cleared away, bulbs planted, and then just wait until it gets cold, as in below freezing high temperatures. THEN I mulch. Out front, I use pine bark mulch, the smaller size, not the big "nuggets".

The idea is to let the bulbs get cold and stay that way until spring. You know how we can get a week of 60 degrees in January, then back to freezing, etc... I don't want the bulbs to get confused and come up and get frozen. Even if they might take it, they probably last longer if they don't come up too early.

My yard is probably smaller than yours, and I don't have much room for a compost bin/pile anymore. I planted over where it used to be. So I pile up leaves and whatever else behind my neighbor's shed. But I'll probably bring home trash bags of leaves from my brother's yard which is all very tall beeches and oaks, mow them up and spread them around out back where no neighbors can really see it very well. There's a big circle where the maple was where nothing has been growing for a long time, and I will turn every inch of the backyard into flowers and shrubs. Then I can mow the lawn in 5 minutes or so! So I'm not going to worry about what that looks like, the more leaves, the better

You make a good point about pests and diseases, but I wonder if any tree's leaves would harbor problems for garden plants... I doubt it. But every sickly hollyhock leaf goes, stuff like that - I try to keep up with that as I weed.

I remember your post about mulching in another forum, I'll try to find it. Also Hart has said things about this in the past that made me rethink certain things I was doing. I think also Baa, (who used to be an administrator here at Dave's) had things to say about it too. I guess in Europe they don't just go to the store and get pine bark, they use leaves.

Eupatorium - this stuff is everywhere this year, roadsides, fields, popping up in people's yards... My 'Chocolate ' has pretty much gone by already.