Thanks for your questions. I have heard folks talk about how mulch draws in bugs before. But the truth of the matter is, insects are a part of any healthy garden. There are good bugs and pernicious ones, so the key is to create a balance in your landscape so that the insects keep each other in check. This is done through a myriad of garden practices. A couple things you can do are to keep your plants and soil healthy and plant a wide variety of plants, especially native plants, in the garden. This way your garden will attract a wide variety of insects.

Scale is one of the most difficult problems we have in south Florida gardens. Ladybugs will eat scale. While you can buy ladybugs to let go in the garden, unless you have a garden which attracts them, you won’t necessarily be able to keep the good ones there.

As for good mulches, always use natural mulches, such as malaleuca or eucalyptus. Some mulches will deter some pests. So, mixing mulches is a good way to go. I have eucalyptus and pine in my landscape. I also allow tree leaves to drop and build up and leave them with purchased mulches.

Stay away from dyed, recycled mulches. Though they sound like they would be Green, they are not. Helen Gabriele Soto at the University of Miami and other researches found that mulches made from construction debris have unsafe levels of arsenic and formaldehyde in them. These carcinogens can be absorbed through the skin and are especially dangerous to children and pets.

Unnatural mulches do nothing for the landscape. So stay away from rubber and plastic often used to as mulches or as weed barriers. Natural mulches break down in the soil and add nutrition to the soil. Plastics are known to leach PCBs when heated, so can certainly leach these known carcinogens into the living landscape when they heat up in your garden.

As for the cocoa shell. Stay away from it. I have read that it can be fatal to who dogs eat it.

Hope this is helpful.