Should i plant flowers before i mulch

Mulching after planting flowers will also help it to stay in place as you water your new plants in. This is particularly important if you are using lighter mulches like straw, hay or sugar cane. Mulching after planting will make it easier to move mulch around the plant roots. You can see where the plant roots end and can see where the stem is. Avoid putting mulch any closer than inches from the stem as this will avoid stem rot. Adding mulch after planting flowers also makes it easier to mix organic matter into soil without mulch in the way.

Before planting it is always a good idea to add some extra aged cow manure or compost to your soil to set your flowers up to grow well over the next year.

Once your flowers have been planted it is also easier to see how much mulch is needed. Often I find that when I rake mulch back, there never seems to be enough to cover the space over again.

Seeing the space that needs to be covered clearly makes it easier to lay enough mulch for your flowers. Most importantly, adding mulch after planting holds moisture in the soil and prevents weeds.

Mulch is a great way to set your plants up to grow well over the season. Mulch will not prevent your flowers from growing if you place it around the plant away from the stem. Mulch will keep weeds away, keep soil moisture in and encourage more leaf growth. Mulch helps to improve the soil and add nutrients such as nitrogen as it is broken down and mixed through your soil by worms and soil microbes.

The nitrogen will support the plant to grow healthy leaves and stems an over time. This will establish the plant so that it is ready to burst into flower. The plant will begin to flower as the nitrogen in the soil is used up. Mulch is not a permanent fixture, you can change it up routinely.

Landscaping with bushes, shrubs and mulch Q. I think you should take your water hose and pretend it's the border of your mulch bed.

That way you can visually see the space created for plantings. If you can't buy a lot of plants right now, then don't make a huge plant bed, or else it will be a lot of work controlling the weeds. You can also use some pots or buckets to represent plants and lay them out in the grass. Maybe something linear to represent the shrubs as hedges Doing it on the computer helps, but there is nothing like gauging the scale of the space while walking through it. From the computer image I think you definitely need more shrubs.

Look up the size of the shrub as it matures and the recommended spacing and then measure the space you have under a window. Be sure to factor in for pruning if it's a hedge. When I was heavy into landscape design, I would always start with the specimens I would figure out the places for those and then work to fill in the rest.

These would usually be against the home or adjacent to a hard surface of some kind. Next is the flowering shrubs, which are strategic in drawing the eye through color.

The remaining gaps get filled with perennial flowers. I always kept to consistent and repeating color schemes and kept the variation of plants to under Hedges and linear plantings I would do in even numbers and staggered triangulated plantings would be in odd numbers.

Never plant one of something unless it is big enough or interesting enough to stand alone and never plant two of something unless it is flanking something like an entrance. Follow this advice and you can't go wrong. Wrong mulch Q. After you improve the soil if needed I would suggest that you widen the area that you have currently designated for planting. The trick with foundation planting is that most people plant too many plants too close to the house which does not allow for the eventual growth of the plant.

It will make it easier to get at the house for repairs or to wash windows if you leave a no go zone as well. In addition, it is often quite dry close to the house increasing watering needs and the lack of ventilation created by planting too closely can lead to plant problems such as mildew etc. Living mulch advise Q. Try the Perennials Forum. Like 4 Save. Like 2 Save. I used all your methods when I had a garden in upstate New York.

Now I have a small window garden in my little city apartment and bugs aren't much of a problem. I'm going to link your hub to my hub about 'growing food'. Glad your flowers sprouted. I think with trial and error, we can all make our lawns beautiful I wish I would have read this before trying to plant my Mimosa Pudica.

I planted the seeds way too deep and for a week and a half I wondered why nothing was sprouting. Thankfully I still have some little plants now, they managed to sprout. Voted up! Thanks for your comment, Jim and Laura. Glad you liked the hub and photos. Great information and beautiful photos on your Hub! I'm happy to hear that you found this hub helpful, Stephanie. I appreciate your comments. I just love to write detailed instructions and with gardening, that was lots of room for details!

Thanks for your comment, Dobson. I'm glad your found the hub helpful. I think trial and error helps a lot to identify what works best. You present this information in a great step by step way that I am sure many gardeners will love to discover. You obviously have a good grasp of the best concepts to having great looking and low maintenance flower beds.

Nice job! Beautifully done and useful. You write a lot of pertinent information for novices and those with some experience. Thanks for sharing. It's worth it if you have an area that is very sunny and tends to get a lot of weeds.

I also liked that method more so than using poison spray which will damage the grass. Glad you liked the hub. Thank you, Sinea Pies, and much appreciated. Tarping is more work, but that area gets so many weeds. Here is a great secret to keep your plants to be planted in soil, not the mulch; find a nursery that sells used black plastic pots. Before mulching, put the pots where you plan on planting. For 1 gallon plants use a two gallon pot.

This helps to not mess up your mulch. You can also use plastic cut to shape for trees and stapled to the soil. Pull up pot and plastic as you plant. Normally, we mulched last. Same idea. Plant your plants and use that pot to cover the plant. Then BLOW in the mulch. Remove the pot immediately and make sure the mulch is not built up on the bark of trees and woody shrubs at the base. If you have shallow rooted plants such as azaleas, rhododendrons, daphne That will help it decompose without robbing the plants of their nitrogen.

Already decomposed it adds nitrogen to your soil, gorgeous, does not smell!