With the recent frosty nights, gardens are coming down for the season. And it’s time to mulch the beds for winter. Mulching offers multiple benefits to a garden over the course of winter. First, it helps regulate temperature extremes that can be devastating to perennials such as herbs (You know how it can be ten below zero one day and warm up to 30 above the next). Second and obviously, it protects the garden’s top soil from winter erosion by laying down 3-6 inches of mulch (Surely you remember those minus sixty degree wind chill days). And finally, as it decomposes over the winter, it returns important nutrients to the soil, nutrients used up by producing plants during the growing season.
I’ve always had the best luck with leaf mulch (ground leaves) and will be mulching my gardens quickly over the next two weeks before the first snow.