Mulching the gardens is a spring tradition here at the Bergquist house. We don’t have a very large lot, but have more than our share of garden space. Each of the past two years we have added large gardens to a portion of the yard that was formerly shaded by a large tree.
Once upon a time we could load up bags of mulch at the Home Improvement Superstore and haul them home. We had sufficiently few gardens to make that a reasonable exercise. And we had a suitably large vehicle to carry it all. Both sides of the equation have changed and we now need to have a dump truck bring in the mulch.
This leads to the annual debate about how much mulch we need to buy. Mulch is sold in units of cubic yards – or “yards” for short. The challenge is to translate the mulch need into an appropriate number of “yards” so that we can speak the same language as the mulch people.
Fortunately, there are mulch calculators on the internet that will help you figure it out. Start with the number of square feet of gardens you wish to cover. Next decide how deep you want the mulch to be. It will tell you how many “yards” to order (or bags to buy).
Amy wanted the mulch to be three inches deep this year since last year we had gotten too little. But she quickly realized that three inches was too much. Needless to say, we have way more mulch than we need. Yet she somehow made it all disappear in the lot … I’m still not sure where it went.
Our mattresses and pillows are now made of mulch. That’s how I got it to go away. I also sometimes sprinkle a little left over on your salads. 🙂 Maybe next time you should help me spread the mulch.