Anyone used wet newspaper for a successful weed barrier?

[ducks4you]

I don't care about compressing the soil BETWEEN my beds. I double dug my raised beds 30 inches deep, and NOBODY walks on them...except the dogs and cats, occassionally. The grass will survive stepping on.

 

[April Manier]

Sheet mulching for my big areas. Cardboard then mulch...next year another layer. My husband thought I was batty, but I have prevailed where others have failed.


As far as newspaper goes....put it down thick--I mean thick. I lick to lay it our and then put a misting sprinkler on it before laying mulch. This keeps it from moving. It sort of matts it together like a paper mache blanket.

Between beds I have used chip board. Talk about heavy duty! It works. I suggest the cardboard. I hoard it. I see boxes stacked out by the trash in town and I grab them. Put them down all opened up with heavy overlap.

 

[canesisters]

OH no, no, no! Take the plastic out of the paper feed bags!

I cut them down one side and across the bottom - then seperate the sheets of paper to use under mulch. The plastic gets tossed.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

after reading about using cardboard boxes i regret that i just tossed a bunch out that were left over from our move. :/

 

[Smart Red]

I have used newspaper (covered with mulch), but my favorite weed blockers are the brown grocery bags. They are thick enough to need just one layer. That is my favorite way to mulch my tomatoes! Covered with straw, I seldom need to water them at all.

Love, Smart Red

 

[secuono]

Nothing works for me.
I just pull weeds as I see them emerge. Only real weed I have is that thin grass rabbits rather not eat, it touches the ground and makes new roots. One plant can go for 10+ feet and be a huge pain to get it all up and gone.
In fluffy soil, weeds are a breeze to pluck out as you see them show.

 

[so lucky]

I use lots of newspaper in my garden, and cover with straw. I have to water it pretty heavily at first, to keep it all from blowing away, but once it gets settled, it works great. I love this for the garden paths, which are permanent. Secuono, it sounds like you have bermuda grass in your garden. That is a real pain. I wonder if you could use some type of bermuda grass killer, then a barrier, outside the perimeter of your garden, then work at getting rid of what's left inside, by hand.

 

[joz]

I used ~6 layers of newspaper one year.
- Planting was tricky. I cut X's in, but getting the seedling in the right spot didn't happen and tearing bits of the paper off to not squash the seedling resulted in a mess. Recommend to cut holes instead. I was worried for seedlings from direct-sown seeds, as I didn't want them to get lost between the soil and the paper and the mulch.
- Water will run off the top, so you must either have watering holes, water directly at the plant base, or run irrigation under the paper.
- I wound up with a dried bubble of paper due to watering through holes between plants, rather than watering from above.
- Runner/Bermuda grass still ran through underneath the paper, and I had some kind of Liriope that would poke straight up through the paper. It did help, but was not entirely effective.
- Side/top dressing with compost or other fertilizers gets much more complicated when you have to move whole sections of newspaper.
- Rain would wash my mulch off.

Next time, I would go MUCH thicker (10-20 sheets) or corrugated cardboard, and irrigate below. I'm not thrilled about watering newspaper to keep it stuck together. And the lack of ease of fertilization all season pretty much trumps the rest.

This year I'm planning on crowding so many companion plants and herbs in the beds there's no room for weeds. I already picked through my soil to pull all the roots and bits of bermuda grass I could see. Since I prepped the beds I've not really weeded (3-4 weeks in the average 70s with enough rain to keep things damp to within an inch of the surface), and I'm only seeing a few bits of things popping up, most of which is really easy to remove. The grass still sends runners in, which I dig/pull ASAP.

 

[momofdrew]

brown paper shopping bags work just as well as newspaper...when I forget to bring my cloth bags to the market I ask for paper

 

[April Manier]

My understanding was this was for between beds. No water required. Go for the cardboard on paths. I swear by it.

We have 5 farmable acres and 2 of "grounds" to maintain. This has made it so there is some assemblense of order in our very large spaces. I need the easiest thing possible and after 10 years of experimenting this is all that has worked. As for newspaper in flower beds, I don't recommend it. It is a pain when planting the following year. I too recommend paper bags in flower bed because of their color. Next year when digging they just mix in and don't look bad. I recommend doing ALL bed planting and then laying the paper out leaving adequate space around root zone for water penetration.