Permies Poll: Do you mulch your garden before winter?

I mulch my strawberry beds prior to the wintertime but realize that I do not intentionally put anything down on my usual growing beds. I've been progressing towards a cover crop system instead of having to intentional mulch but I wonder... what do you do?

Thank you in advance for your votes and your thoughts.

I mulch with wood chips year round any time I can get them, but right now is one of the best times to mulch fruit trees, fruit bushes and perennial vegetables in the Northwest. Sometimes I  use compost and cardboard as mulch as well. Sawdust is good for some mushrooms, cardboard is good mulch for landscape morels.

I always try to get some fava beans, clover and peas for cover crops planted now, too.

growing year round, don't really have winter mulching needs.
I do mulch depending on water needs (when it's dry and I need more water retention) and according to snail/slug pressure (when it's really wet, mulch becomes Snail Paradise and I'll lose everything I have if I leave the mulch out).

At end of growing season (usually around Halloween), I pull or cut down the annual vegetables, plant garlic, and spread a layer of compost, then a layer of fallen leaves and garden prunings

No. I bury an enormous amount of tree leaves in the fall but don't mulch on top.
In my other garden I stop weeding in midsummer and by fall it is mostly covered by a thick crop of 'weeds'. Natural mulch.

My farmer partner always has a lot of haybails he leaves around his fields too long. Then the cows don't like them anymore. So free mulch. It's quite the job, but i mulch all the pathways between the beds. And newly to colonize parts to add to the permaculture project i dump a lot of mulch to kill the grasses over winter and remulch in spring and then dump manure on it. Grow pumpkins. Or just put potatos in it.

If I apply mulch, the plants drown and rot.  Some well established herbs can survive coarse woodchips, but won't thrive.

Likewise summer mulch only works for me where there is regular and intense irrigation.   Otherwise it keepsmthe water out as it is usually bone dry by the 8 to 10 weeks of drought (drought here lasts 5 to 8 months each summer).

I learned this by applying mulch to half my garden over seceral years and observing how the mulch side did and how the unmulched side did.  As we don't water most of our garden plants, they collect a lot of moisture from dew and the mulch prevents it from getting to the roots and the winter rains from draining during the cold wet season we call winter.

I voted 'no' because that more accurately reflects what really happens, but only because I run out of time. If I had all the time, energy, spoons, and wellness in the world, I would.

I spread leaves in fall. Oftentimes, especially in exposed places, they blow off, but I do notice mulching keeps the soil more intact. Oftentimes I will hill up in spring so the mulch gets covered and buried.

Snow is also a sort of mulch. If only it stayed the whole winter these days! (Aside from January thaw—that isn’t new.)

Last vote in apple poll was on October 14, 2025

Hugo Morvan wrote:My farmer partner always has a lot of haybails he leaves around his fields too long. Then the cows don't like them anymore. So free mulch. It's quite the job, but i mulch all the pathways between the beds. And newly to colonize parts to add to the permaculture project i dump a lot of mulch to kill the grasses over winter and remulch in spring and then dump manure on it. Grow pumpkins. Or just put potatos in it.

I got two of the large round bales this year. The farmer had been using them for a winter windbreak for a few years and they were too far gone for the cows. My whole garden got a layer of mulch which really saved it in the very dry spring we had this year. It was mostly grass hay, so I am expecting a good (bad) crop of weedy grass next year!