TheEasyGarden - Gardening Forum

That's pretty much what I do in some places, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, beans, such as that.  I lay down two to four layers of newspaper, then cover that with mulch, either year old wood chips that I take from my landscaping beds or wheat straw.  Newspaper by itself will not work.  It'll dry out and blow away.

The weeds are not that hard to pull with just regular mulch, but I find this stops them from germinating nearly as bad. The newspaper will rot and you can just turn it under here.  Not sure how wet or long your summers are.  Some people might get different results.

I don't use the thick slick newspaper or stuff that has a lot of color.  I don't want some of the chemicals in those colors in my garden around my food.

Ridgerunner wrote:

That's pretty much what I do in some places, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, beans, such as that.  I lay down two to four layers of newspaper, then cover that with mulch, either year old wood chips that I take from my landscaping beds or wheat straw.  Newspaper by itself will not work.  It'll dry out and blow away.

The weeds are not that hard to pull with just regular mulch, but I find this stops them from germinating nearly as bad. The newspaper will rot and you can just turn it under here.  Not sure how wet or long your summers are.  Some people might get different results.

I don't use the thick slick newspaper or stuff that has a lot of color.  I don't want some of the chemicals in those colors in my garden around my food.

I'm glad you told me about the mulch! I'd have had newspaper all over the yard ha ha. I've got probably three dump trucks full of mulch from the power company last year cutting back the trees in our area. DH had them dump the stuff in our driveway. I wish they could have gotten closer to my gardens though.

When starting a new raised bed I use thick layers of newspaper to kill any grass or weeds before filling the bed with soil. I have used newspaper under mulch to help prevent weeds. I have also used cardboard and grain bags with out a plastic liner under leaf mulch. The grain bags have lasted the longest. My favorite mulch for veggies is grass clippings. It seems to last most of a season if applied thick enough. I like them best around carrots and sweet potatoes which I find to be the most difficult to keep up with in regard to weeding.

I used those feed bags with the three layers and the plastic inside at the end of the garden with mulch on top.  I mulch between my fence and the vegggies too, and still have problems with Bermuda grass.  Those feed bags kept the weeds and grass way down, but that plastic did not disintegrate.  I was picking out pieces of plastic that fall.  I decided to not use the feed bags again, at least the middle section that had the plastic.  Then they switched feed bags to those thick plastic ones so I didn't have to worry about it anyway.

ducks4you wrote:

I've used it more or less succesfully.  I just don't like it during a wet year bc I slip on it.  Personally, I just like establishing a good carpet of grass between my raised beds, bc I can just mow it before it goes to seed.

I've read about not disturbing much of the grass in a large garden without beds too. They just turned up the soil a little and planted between the grass. They said that it helped with moisture by not disturbing much of the root system. That would be much easier to just run a mower down my rows. I have a large garden area or I'd be putting raised beds in too. Maybe I'll tackle that project when I retire in 30 years.