My county gives away free mulch. People bring in downed trees, branches, etc. to the county dump, where it is ground up and put in huge piles. Up here in Appalacia, there's lots of downed wood.
Thus, we have an essentially limitless source of free mulch. The mulch isn't all that pretty, and is probably considered low quality; it is mostly ground hardwood with a sizeable minority of pine and a sprinkling of random woody brush.
The other day I was down there shoveling the stuff into the back of my pickup (the county has a frontloader that provides a filling service on an irregular basis, but I always seem to miss it), and the caretaker came running out of his shady spot yelling at me to stop.
He said that I was taking the mulch from the wrong pile -- that the stuff I was loading had just been ground that day and would kill my plants, particularly if there was a lot of pine in it. He said that mulch had to sit for a couple of weeks and ferment a little before it could safely be used. He strongly suggested that if I was using the mulch for flower garden that I use the next pile over, which had been sitting for a couple of weeks. He said that the pile I was digging from would be good for driveways and walkways, but that I should be careful about using it around plants.
I had never heard of that. Is that so? Does mulch have to "age?"
billo