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Refresh Planting Beds with Mulch to Protect During the Winter Freeze

Pugh’s Earthworks

Commercial Landscape Maintenance Services For Tennessee

Pugh’s Earthworks provides commercial landscape design and maintenance services throughout Tennessee, including Memphis, Jackson, and Nashville plus we service residential and commercial lawns in Little Rock, Arkansas. Our monthly seasonal landscape care for lawns includes professional lawn care, including irrigation and sprinklers, fertilizing, reseeding, aeration, and more. Lawn care can include additional services for your landscape, pest control, and ice and snow removal needs.

Along with your lawn, you may have other aspects of your commercial landscape or residential yard the needs care before winter sets in, including your planting beds or flower beds. There are many reasons why now is the time to mulch these beds or have someone like us to the work for you.

Garden mulch helps with weed suppression, conserves moisture, and adds organic matter that decomposes into plant-friendly fertilizer. Most importantly, mulch protects plant roots from heavy freezes and temperature extremes. The mulch does this by keeping a consistent soil temperature that keeps the roots of those bedding plants and flowers comfortable during those harsh winter months. Think of mulch as an insulating blanket.

The best mulches for winter include coarse-textured materials like straw or hay, pine or evergreen boughs, and other fibrous organic mulch materials. Shredded leaves and compost also provide good winter cover for perennials and bulbs. Also, pine needles help ornamental beds and shrubs while straw works well for vegetable beds and strawberry beds.

Mulches that contain shredded leaves and compost also provide food for earthworms, microbes, and other beneficial creatures that live in the soil and that also help plants get through the winter.

Apply the mulch until after the first hard or killing frost. Otherwise, mulching too early may cause stress and weaken the plant.
When applying mulch, leave a one- to two-inch mulch-free zone around plants and put mulch three to four inches away from the base of shrubs. You should apply a two- to four-inch layer when using fine-textured mulch and three- to six-inches thick for coarser-textured mulch.