What's the best mulch? Depends where you live. Here are 4 options by region.

If NIL (name, image, & likeness) contracts and anti-trust lawsuits have you soured on college basketball, you’re not alone.

College basketball just ain’t what it used to be. Of course I’m a bit biased. I grew up on Big East basketball, back when that meant something. You know, back when there was a bit more difference between basketball and football.

But fear not. We’ve got some bracketology of our own to talk about today ― not March Madness but rather, Mulch Madness.

Now that we’ve had the obligatory early spring tease (yes, winter will make a return before this is all over), everyone’s firing up the mulch wagons and getting ready to cover everything from here to there with a fresh layer of mulch just in time for Kentucky Derby season.

So for the millionth time, let’s cover some mulch basics.

What does mulch do for the garden and the gardener?

Like anything, it’s always best to know why you’re doing something before you decide how to do it. Without knowing why you’re mulching, it’s hard to know how to properly mulch.

Effective mulch can be just about any loose aggregate material that will stay where it’s put, not significantly reduce air exchange into and out of the soil, and not contribute anything toxic to the soil/root environment. A proper mulch material can help to reduce evaporative water loss and reduce heat build-up in the soil during long, hot summers. It can help improve rain percolation into the soil, decrease weed pressure in the garden, and some mulches can also add nutrients to the soil below.

Of course that is assuming you’ve selected the right mulch for your location and you've applied it in a sensible way. So let’s go to the brackets to see what works where.

Northeast Regional Bracket

In this part of the country, the most common mulch material is probably hardwood bark. Most of it is a byproduct of the timber/lumber/paper industries. It is generally ground to a relatively uniform particle size and spreads fairly easily with a rake or mulch fork.

One of the most important things to consider when looking to use hardwood bark mulch is whether or not your source is composted hardwood bark.  Uncomposted hardwood bark has a tendency to form an impenetrable crust when it gets hot and dry in summer, meaning that summer thunderstorm or your irrigation attempt, will send all that water sheeting off the mulch and down the storm drain while your plants suffer from drought conditions. Composted bark also supplies more net nutrient gain to the soil below and holds in place better during a heavy rain event. Basically, composted hardwood bark is a swish. Uncomposted bark is a brick off the back of the iron.

Southeast Regional Bracket

Here, there are two winners. Pine straw is generally harvested from agroforestry operations where the needles are simply collected as they naturally fall from the branches. It is light weight, easy to spread, and it holds in place quite nicely. Pine straw allows rain/irrigation to pass freely into the soil and provides for excellent air exchange between above and below the mulch layer. Pine straw also has an added advantage of discouraging slugs — a major plus if you have any hostas in your garden.

The biggest challenge with pine straw is that it is difficult to keep clean. If you have big old hollies that drop old, yellowed leaves in early summer (a normal thing for hollies) those big, long pine needles love to intertwine themselves among the holly spines. Trying to rake the leaves out of the mulch can be more infuriating than a lack of 3-second calls in a Big Ten game.

The second winner in the Southeast Region is what we call Pine Fines. This used to be a waste product from the manufacture of those giant, silly, pine nuggets you sometimes still see for sale as a mulch. Those giant nuggets provide almost no mulch benefit — they float away on the slightest bit of rain runoff (as kids we used to file them into boat shapes and race them down the neighborhood creek!) they provide almost no weed suppression, and they break down so slowly that they add little organic matter or nutrition to the soil.

Pine fines, on the other hand, have particles less than one half inch across. The product spreads nicely, looks fabulous, breaks down at a reasonable rate, and adds a nice bit of organic matter and nutrition to the soil. At Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, we use it as both a mulch and as a soil amendment.

The only foul call on pine fines as a mulch is that it is not a great product for a garden bed that sits on any kind of slope. A heavy Kentucky rain can send your pine fines down the driveway and into the street. For moderate to steep slopes, pine straw works better.

Northwest Regional Bracket

I’m guessing that if you decided to take a walk around Gonzaga's college campus you’d see quite a bit of what we call soft wood bark mulch. Mostly consisting of processed bark from Hemlock and Douglas fir, this mulch is similar to the Southeast’s pine fines, just maybe not quite as small in particle size. As with hardwood bark mulch, it’s best to find a source that is composted — and if formal composting isn’t an option, an old pile that’s been sitting around a while is still better than fresh. The larger and sometimes stringier texture compared to pine fines means the Northwest’s softwood bark mulch will hold up a little better on a moderate slope.

More: What early crops, seedlings should you plant in March? Here are 3 things to know

The Southwest Regional Bracket

Rounding out the geographic mulch brackets, we’ll cover an inorganic mulch — stone. While stone mulches are not the only types used in the drier portions of the Southwest, they are more common there than in other parts of the lower 48. One reason stone mulches work well in the Southwest — and they work perfectly well in other parts of the country as well — is that the extreme heat of this part of the country would cause most organic mulches to break down to nothing in about the length of time required for a halftime score update. A good quality stone mulch will even last longer than the time it takes to review a foul call on a last second, game ending 3-pointer.

Finally, regardless of your mulch of choice, please, no mulch volcanoes around the base of trees and no more than 2-inches of mulch on any bed. Either one earns an immediate Flagrant-1 foul call!

Paul Cappiello is the executive director at Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, 6220 Old Lagrange Road, yewdellgardens.org.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The best garden mulch may depend on where you live