Since people who are neither following me nor members of this community filled my comment section with their opinions on red mulch, I’ll respond accordingly.
If you don’t like red mulch, don’t use red mulch.
Black is a nice look, but absorbs a lot of heat.
Natural brown might be your thing.
The fact is, hemlock mulch is naturally reddish in color. It’s also not cheap.
I chose dyed pine as a lower cost option.
“But those dyes! The health of your soil and your plants!”
Relax, Felicia. While the same people commenting probably have food with Red#40 in it, in their home right now, and I’m not eating the daisies or the digitalis, it turns out that in most cases, red mulch is dyed with iron oxide or vegetable based colorants.
So again, it reddish brown mulch is an abomination to you, steer clear of hemlock, cedar, or dyed mulch.
As someone who has used all the other colors and plain wood chips, I decided to go with red mulch, and I think it looks fkn awesome, so stop pissing on my parade.