Went to buy some plum coloured slate chips to use as mulch in a garden from the same place I got it last time.
2019 price £80
Today was £200
You would likely be better off stacking rocks than leaving money in the bank.
Discussion
You'd be better off stacking hardwood chips & building soil with your mulch.
I've recently literally spent days removing weed mat & pebble mulch from beds.
😂 Yes I generally don't like the stuff either especially the weed matting. I go for that approach in my garden but not everywhere in other peoples.
The advantage of rock mulch is it doesn't break down so fast, birds don't pick it up distributing it everywhere and sometimes people don't want plants in certain area so I can keep it generally weed free and 'clean' because I don't use glyphosate. Gives me more time to keep the other woodchipped borders topped up too.
With the rocks, soil starts forming from organic matter accumulating. Then the weeds come.
You either spray or add more rock mulch. Digging the rocks out sucks, which I suppose is a reason for what you're doing.
I'm in the subtropics & I still prefer wood mulch, even if I'm not going to grow in it. It's like a soil/potting mix factory.
Weed mat is just so retarded. Where do people think the weed seeds come from?
It took me 7 years to figure out that the previous owner had laid it at the base of our big raised veggie bed. I never suspected someone would build a veggie bed in what's basically a perforated pond liner. 🤯
Yes all very true I just hand weed it. Does reduce frequency and type though, more tree seedlings rather than early succession weeds . It's just a small sections all around the house rather than a bed or something substantial but perhaps I will seed it with some campanula for bees too .
I had a similar thing happen when I moved in here, all weed matting over pea shingle I didn't realise it was there for a few years because so much organic material had formed on top. I was pressing apples and left the pomace there and so seedlings developed but they ended up messed up due the roots being all tangled in the matting. Hated it ever since then.