A tour of LipsYard, courtesy of new mulch

There it is, 6 cubic yards of hardwood bark mulch, dumped in our driveway, longing to cover our planting beds, keeping them moist, warm, and weed-free.

First things first, How Much Mulch? Mulch is usually sold by the cubic yard, and that can leave you scratching their head trying to figure out how much to buy. Here’s the easiest way:
1. First, find out the size of the area you want to cover in square feet. This is easy; just multiply the length of your garden by the width.
2. Next, decide how deep you want your mulch to be, in inches. A couple of inches is usually sufficient.
3. Now multiply the size of your garden in square feet (#1) by the depth of your mulch in inches (#2).
4. Divide the number you get in #3 by 324. This is the number of cubic yards of mulch you will need to cover your garden.

If your yard is all curvy and unmeasurable like ours, guessing is your next best option.

I've been working away at "The Pile" over the past eight days, and thought a photo-blog of the progress, and a de-facto tour of the yard, would make a nice Memorial Day posting. Feel free to make up your own "spreading the mulch" analogies to virtually any member of the Bush administration.

Tools needed for this project include:

A Wheelbarrow

Several 5 gallon planting pots (good for moving the mulch in-between plants)

A Pitchfork for getting the mulch in the wheelbarrow and pots

Garden Gloves for spreading the mulch into an even 2 inch layer

A foam kneeling pad for the old man's joints

Instead of captioning each photo, just know that I'm working around the LipsYard counter clockwise, with a reference photo of the diminishing "Pile" thrown in every so often.

That's it, the last wheelbarrow. We probably got 1 yard too much, but our neighbor took some of it off our hands for his beds. The look is neat, the scent; woodserific!