Here's How Often You Should Refresh The Mulch In Your Garden

Mulch is an important part of many home gardens because it not only helps prevent the growth of opportunistic weeds but also helps to trap water in your soil to keep it from drying out. However, despite the simple nature of this process, it is easier than you may think to make gardening-ruining mistakes using mulch, whether that is mulching around your trees incorrectly or simply not knowing when you need to refresh the mulch in your garden. In fact, how often you need to replace your mulch or add more depends on what type of mulch you are using. In general, organic mulches (like those made of wood chips, bark, compost, straw, or hay), last for around four to six years before they break down completely and need to be replenished once every one to two years.

Replenishing mulch — or adding a new mulch to your old mulch beds — once every couple of years is important because, although sometimes you may still have some mulch left on your flower beds, not replenishing it will lead to weed growth and moisture loss in your soil. Luckily, when you are replenishing your mulch there is no need to remove the old stuff since it is made from organic materials and will eventually break down and provide nutrients to your plants. Instead, all you need to do is buy a new bag of mulch and pour it on top of your old mulch. But, before you do that, here are a few ways to decide whether or not you need to add more mulch or if your garden beds can last a little longer.

If you are using a type of natural mulch that breaks down very quickly like grass clippings, straw, hay, leaves, or compost, one good way to check if it needs to be replaced is to grab a handful. If much of your mulch has broken down into small pieces and mixed with the soil, then it's definitely time to replace it. Furthermore, being able to see your soil through your mulch or finding that weeds are sprouting up through it are both good signs that your mulch needs to be refreshed.

There are other organic mulches that take longer to break down, like wood chip mulch or bark mulch. In this case, you may not need to add more or refresh your mulch for a couple of years. However, you may still want to refresh your wood mulch even if it hasn't broken down if it is a dyed mulch (which are nontoxic nowadays) and starts to lose its color from exposure to direct sunlight and other elements, starts to sink into the ground, or looks generally untidy than it did the previous year. Of course, this is completely personal and some gardeners may prefer to refresh their mulch often while others like to wait. If you want to refresh your mulch as little as possible, it is a good idea to purchase high-quality wood mulch so that it doesn't break down or fade quickly and continues to look better for longer.