Go Without Weeds This Season!
Let’s face it: no gardener likes having weeds in the garden. Weeds are more disturbing than slugs. No garden is free of these troublesome plants for very long.
A single weed can produce as many as 250,000 seeds. Some seeds are viable for only a year while other can lie dormant for decades just waiting for their chance to sprout.
They compete with garden plants for water, nutrients and light. Weeding is really a nasty chore on a nice spring day.
But all is not lost – there are plenty of things you can do for weed control in your organic garden to keep the noxious weeds at bay.
The absolutely best stuff I have found to block weeds in the garden is newspaper. It is good for the soil ( adds carbon), it’s biodegradable, it allows water to pass through it into the soil without washing your mulch away, and it it is easily torn and trimmed.
I usually use 8-10 layers, spray it with water to get the layers stick together well, and then cover everything with bark mulch.
This stops the seeds that are in your soil from germinating. The newspaper will decompose over time. It will not prevent weeds from sprouting on top of the mulch. And, it blocks the roots of the weeds well enough that it is easy to pull them up.
It takes about two years for the paper to completely break down in our soil. By that time, the weeds and the seeds they left under the newspaper will have been composted.
You will know it’s time for more paper when you move the mulch around and the newspaper has disappeared.
I used newspaper with shredded pine bark mulch when we planted our strawberries.
It was practically maintenance free for the first two years. The strawberry runners would root on top of the mulch and it filled itself in very nicely.
Happy gardening with another episode to come.
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Yours truly for a great garden with outstanding veggies and flowers.
Polly-organic gardener
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