Folks, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk with you about your mulch.

First, let me say that I’m pro-mulch. Have been most of my adult life. Some of my best friends use mulch. But after another weekend of repeated trips to the big-box garden store to buy more mulch, I’m starting to wonder how much time and money is wasted dealing with mulch.

I’m guessing I spend about half a million dollars a year on mulch. Seems like a lot, right? I never know how much mulch to buy.

Over and over, I schlep home dozens and dozens of those 2-cubic-feet bags because I keep thinking, “That should do it.” Only that never does “it” because I can’t figure out how much mulch gets us to “it.”

What bothers me about my compulsion for mulch is that after spending so much time around mulch – deciding the right color mulch, prepping my garden and tree base for mulch, and then the tedious task of spreading mulch – I missed getting in on the ground floor of what I call mulchamania.

It’s a no-brainer to invest in Apple or Amazon. But if I had given it a second thought, I could have made a killing when Scott’s expanded its mulch inventory. I didn’t realize that the next big money-making operation was right under my feet. 

What a gimmick. We all keep buying the stuff when the fact is we don’t need mulch.

We certainly don’t need as much mulch as we think we need. Yet we’re a society driven to spend enormous amounts of money to cover large areas of barren ground with chipped wood from who knows where dyed with who knows what.

I’m no horticulturalist and I’ve never been asked to play one on television, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that things grew quite well before mulch. Bet if you looked around a few decades back, you’d see plenty of beautiful gardens, fertile trees, and lush lawns. Then one day, some wise guy decided green grass, red roses, purple irises and white peonies contrasting off a color blue sky just didn’t give off enough color. He needed red cedar mulch.

His neighbor looks over, sees red, and decides to go with dark brown mulch. Another neighbor figures he’ll outdo both guys and puts down vibrant gold mulch. Yet another neighbor sees all this and finds himself some deep black mulch. Meanwhile, the original mulch man decides to go back to his garden and adds rich red mulch to his regular red mulch.

Ask any guy why he mulches, he’ll look you straight in the eye, lie, and start channeling Mr. Green Jeans. He’ll tell you he does it to cool the soil and plant the roots, suppress the weeds, retain moisture, and feed the soil. If you believe any of that, I’ve got a rhododendron in Brooklyn I’d love to sell ya.

Truth is, our neighbors mulch, so we feel compelled to mulch. We see pictures in magazines and online of pretty gardens, landscaped in tons of colored mulch and say, “Hey – I want that garden. Let’s get mulch!”

Does it matter that your neighbors have grass and you have a cement pond? Heck no! Throw down some mulch and no one will be the wiser.

Experts call this “the neighbor-beater factor.”

The theory is that guys can get a little bit competitive when it comes to using mulch.  Go a little overboard. You see this in guys who go with the “volcano” method of mulching around trees. They pile the mulch so high it’s hitting the branches. 

It all comes down to this. Guys mulch – and it’s one of those stupid guy things – because we need to out-mulch the guy next door. Men have mulch envy.

Barry Lewis is a longtime journalist and author who lives with his wife Bonnie in the Town of Neversink. He can be reached at      barrylewisscdemocrat@gmail.com.