This Quick March Mulching Trick will Give you Even Earlier Flowers This Spring

Mulching is a powerful tool in the backyard, helping gardeners to protect and nurture their plants and, sometimes, give them gentle encouragement to flower just that little bit earlier. Fancy healthier, more robust plants that bring colour and joy as the winter frosts thaw? Then you’ve come to the right place.

Fall and spring are two of the most common times of year to mulch backyard flowerbeds and borders, but for different reasons. A spring mulch nourishes plants ahead of the new growing season, as well as helping to suppress weeds and lock in moisture in the soil. A fall or winter mulch, in the other hand is a trick gardeners use to protect plants from the worst of winter’s cold.

An expert guide to mulching will take you through the basics of this useful practice, but here we’re tackling a specific kind of mulching, which needs to be removed in March.

When to Remove your Winter Mulch

If you’ve put down a protective fall or winter mulch, it’s important to remove it – and remove it in the right way – in spring. As spring arrives, plants need warmth, sunlight and air circulation to trigger new growth.

Removing your mulch allows all these conditions to come together, often just a touch faster, encouraging root and shoot growth and, for many early-season plants, resulting in flowers a little earlier.

Knowing when to remove your winter mulch can be tricky. It all depends on the weather conditions where you live and when you’re likely to be free from overnight frosts (don’t forget those hyper-local frost pockets in your backyard, dips and hollows where cold, dense air collects at night and where frost can take longer to thaw than it does elsewhere).

Peter Lowe, Garden Program Manager for The Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio, says that you need to know your own space: ‘As for when folks should remove winter mulch, it’s all dependent on the plant and the area you’re in.

'In Newark, Ohio, we’re in a 6a hardiness zone, so for us it’s the middle of May, but it will be different for every individual. Are your plants marginally hardy? Are you handling a perennial that you just planted in the fall? What’s the age of the plant? Does your soil thaw slowly? Those are just a few of the things to consider when removing winter mulch – it’s all plant and location specific.’

On the whole though, when you’ve had a week or so of warmer weather, the ground has begun to thaw, the weather report looks good and frosts seem to be a thing of the past, that’s when to get kitted out and go in there with gloves and a trowel, just like this Fiskars trowel from Amazon, gradually remove the mulch and let your plants breathe and grow – remembering of course to leave frost pocket areas until a little later.

Remove your mulch too early and you risk a late frost damaging any new, tender growth shoots. Too late and there’s a risk of one of two things. Keeping mulch on as the air warms up can trap the cold in, leaving you with plants that will send out shoots later and flower later too.

Later still and it can encourage the growth of mold as the soil warms up underneath a damp layer of mulch, causing root or bulb rot and diseases.

How to Remove your Winter Mulch

A gradual approach to removing winter mulch is best, pulling it back a little at a time rather than all at once.

You might see a few shoots popping tentatively up through the mulch, but if not have a gentle feel around with your hands and carefully scoop away some of the mulch from around them, leaving it in rough circles around each emerging plant.

This way, if an unexpected frost threatens, you can pop it back temporarily.

A pair of touch-sensitive gardening gloves like these from Lowes will be helpful: you’ll likely want your hands protected but you’ll need to feel for those tender shoots and remove the mulch without damaging them.

If you’d rather use a rake to remove your winter mulch, choose a spring-tine rake like this one from Ace Hardware and go gently to avoid causing damage to emerging shoots.

Which Plants Should be Given a Winter Mulch?

Plenty of hardy plants can be left in the ground over winter without any protection at all. Of course that’ll depend entirely on your hardiness zone.

Local and hyper-local frost pockets will have an impact too, so it’s essential to get know not just your area but your particular yard as well, as there may be parts of your backyard that stay frozen and frosted longer than others.

In frost-prone US hardiness zones, you’re best off mulching a variety of plants, including borderline hardy plants such as purple top (Verbena bonariensis), salvias, penstemon, alstroemeria and globe artichokes in late fall or early winter, tucking them in over the cold dark days of winter and protecting them from harsh frosts.

All of these plants are herbaceous perennials that die right back to the crown in winter. So a generous layer of mulch over the top is the best safeguard against hard frost and freezing ground. It will also discourage them from waking up too early, perhaps after a couple of days of relatively warm ‘false spring’, which could spur them into growth too soon only to be damaged when real winter returns.

Peter Lowe has a list of plant priorities for mulching: ‘A few plants that benefit from winter mulching are clumping perennials, plants that are shallowly rooted and newly planted perennials from the fall. If you got your planting done late last autumn, there’s a chance the root systems aren’t established enough to survive through winter on their own and will benefit from an additional layer of mulch or leaf compost in the winter.’

More plants that can benefit from a winter mulch include hostas, delphiniums, spring bulbs, newly planted shrubs, roses and young fruit plants.

A winter mulch is also said to help new plants settle in and combat the effects of frost heave, the repeated freezing and thawing of the soil, which can damage the roots of your plants.

Peter explains: ‘Winter mulching helps to keep the soil consistently cold and it protects plants from heaving out of the ground during freeze and thaw.’

Given a little attention in spring, your backyard could be in beautiful bloom ahead of its time. Do it right and your protective winter mulch can transition from insulating blanket to spring growth booster, bringing you a joyful, early start to the gardening year, at the same time helping your plants to thrive.

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