Mulching advice please

nealeholl

I’ve got a load of compost that I want to use to mulch my borders. I was thinking of leaving it until the soil is a bit warmer, but already every bit of space has young tulip and daffodil shoots poking through, and in a few weeks time there will be even more. Should I just mulch on top of emerging shoots and let them push through, or somehow try to just mulch the gaps?

chicky

I don’t mulch til late March, when the soil has warmed up a bit, but there’s still a lot of moisture to lock in.  By that time the bulbs are up, so I can mulch round them, and I can also see the new growth on my perennials, which I mulch around rather than smother their crowns.  However, that is quite a fiddly way of doing it (and drives my OH mad 😠).

Alternative is to cut everything down and mulch over the top of it all in late autumn, and the new growth will push through in the spring.