I am debating what type of mulch to use in my vegetable garden and what type of mulch to use in my flower beds. Anyone have any suggestions? Also where do yall get your mulch in the raleigh area?
Mulch in Central NC
If you just need shredded mulch for the beds, the county/city yard waste center has mulch pretty cheap if you load it yourself. They can also give you the name of someone who can deliver it for you for a fee. I've gotten compost & mulch from there with no problem.
Not sure what to recommend for a veggie garden as I don't manage one of those. I gave up the first season when my dogs trampled my corn and arugla. :(
I use the compost from the county recycling facility as mulch for all my beds, and my veggie garden. It's cheap ($10/ton---roughly, a pick-up load), $2.00/bag---I'm guessing here, those bags look like they may hold 25-30 lbs. I need Dump trucks of the stuff, so I never bought a bag). Had a problem a few years ago with the pH of that compost (WAY alkaline!), and had to switch to mushroom compost @ $50/ton from a (friendly) local commercial supplier for a couple of years. But they got their mess straightened out at the dump, and I've had no problems since switching back to the cheap stuff from the County. Not quite as beneficial as Mushroom Compost, but way better than whatever's in 3rd place! I have numerous old Live Oaks on the property with huge leaf spans. Local Live Oak guru (and he really is) I called out to consult about how to deal with the Hurricane Hugo damage to the trees, told me "if you remove the grass from under the canopy and replace it with mulch, they'll repair themselves more efficiently than you or I, or anyone else could ever do. And way faster". This meant killing huge areas of grass under the canopies and replacing it with "bare ground". How many ways can you spell "ugly and unattractive? Huge expanses of barren ground under the trees didn't appeal to me, but losing 70-90 year old live oaks appealed to me even less, so I did it. Didn't like the cost of putting 5" deep cyprus mulch over thousands of square yards of turf, so I put thousands of square yards of compost from the town dump on the trees, and covered that mulch with a 2" layer of expensive Cyprus Mulch. Worked like a charm! Trees recovered quickly, weeds were abolutely minimal...it was a win-win all around. That was about 20 years ago. Now I've got to do it again this year. Think I got some pretty good advice...Once every 20 years...I can deal with that!