Jay ----I have gravel mulch (medium sized river rock pebbles) on the entire property, front and back. We hauled in tons. It comes with pros and cons. CONS---- digging is more difficult + you have to push the gravel away if digging up a plant, otherwise you bury the gravel. I am in the process of thinning out some grasses and I don't use a shovel for this reason. I'm using a hori-hori knife so I don't do too much disturbance to the gravel. A hoe like woods tea described wouldn't work either. You have to get down on your knees and pull stuff in gravel, often working your fingers into the space between the pebbles to grab hold of the weed. It gets washed down or buried under soil if on a slope or sometimes just during a heavy rain even when not on much of a slope. Gravel can work itself down pretty deep over time. Seeds come up very easy in it, that can be a pro or a con. It works both ways for me Your knees get sore if you garden like me and like to squat down with your knee or knees on the ground. When you rake leaves, you also rake gravel and I really hate leaves on my gravel. I have to sort out what I rake up so I don't toss my "we paid for that gravel and I ain't tossing it" gravel. PROS----It looks great and of course never breaks down. Its kind of the same effect you get when it snows and the garden looks neat with all that consistent layer of white around the plants instead of dark soil or leaves etc. You can go out right after a rain and walk around. It melts the snow off fast in winter and keeps the ground warmer on sunny winter days which we have a lot of. Its also good for drainage or plants that don't like wet feet or suffer crown rot on winter, it wicks away water rather than holding it around the plant base and it keeps the soil moist down low and provides a good sponge on top so water soaks in fast compared to compacted dry soil where you easily get runoff when it gets dry. We put in a deep layer of coarse sand under the river rock which also helps with good drainage. I keep it well weeded but weeds are easy to pull in that sandy soil and I like weeding so its not a problem for me to keep the parts clear that I want to stay clear. I do a lot of weeding in the gravel. I agree with woodstea, you don't need (or want) to add nitrogen. I don't think wood chip types of mulch look right around prairie plants myself, its too artificial and urban-flower-beddish looking. I've seen some yards where people leave swaths of trimmed grass creating defined areas set off by large, usually curved areas of prairie or tall grasses that grow pretty thick. It looks very neat, well defined yet still natural and in a case like that you wouldn't need mulch of any kind, the plants would shade the soil. Just cut it back in spring (easy). I have to trim everything by hand, one plant at a time, because we tossed the mower and besides, you wouldn't want to mow over or around the area with small pebbles that could fly out, those pebbles have a way of escaping from where they were put. We have several large rocks among the gravel and I like the way they look, especially in winter but they tend to get a bit lost in summer.

I have a mock orange, mallow, hollyhock plants or seeds but they are getting rust by this time of year - you could have seeds of that and malva too. I haven't seen sheep sorrel yet but I had it last year, might still. Asters are one of my biggest weeds but I don't know which one it is.

Bumping this back up to the top in case there are any new Norther Gardening forum members that would like to sign on. Please use the link to sign your name or username as an interested party (do not sign here). Thanks and Happy SPRING to everyone! Barb southern Ontario, CANADA

"Bp, when you're out there spreading huge bags of coffee grounds all over the lawn, do you notice that the neighbors start calling in their children and pulling the shades?" One neighbor came over and asked what I was spreading and when I told him, he said something like that was what he thought, but didn't believe it until he asked. Then he told me about some fertilizer he uses that makes it grow so fast in the summer that he can hardly keep up with mowing and watering. I didn't bother pointing out that I thought that was counterproductive. Another neighbor said he might try it after I told him they give the grounds free even if you don't buy coffee. But so far, I haven't seen him actually do it. Many of my neighbors think I'm nuts anyway, since I compost, I don't bag my clippings, I mow my leaves into the lawn and I didn't get the unmetered water. My water bills are already lower than they would be with the unmetered water, and I don't have nearly as many problems with weeds as I'd have with that water (it's not filtered very well and is full of weed seeds). I was walking around this morning and it looks like I'm finally getting sheep fescue and/or red fescue germination. Still not a lot, but at least some of it is germinating.