Grass clippings are excellent. Straw is excellent. Hay is OK if you cannot get straw, but will have more weed seeds than straw, at least theoretically.
Pat
Whatever you have.. You could even use cardboard or newspaper but its not very aestheticall pleasing for a garden. For BEST weed suppression I'd recommend one of the proprietary artificial mulch fabrics such as Phormisol. These have a blocking equivalent to black plastic for weeds but are water permeable. As you mention black plastic it would suggest you aim to cover a reasonable sized clear area and plant up, rather than mulching around many established plants???
For natural mulches you cannot really beat chipped bark, but remember to lay a little pelleted chicken manure or similar high N with it to prevent Nitrogen lock up. // Jim
in article snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com, Mark A at snipped-for-privacy@virgin.net wrote on 8/20/03 10:25 AM:
There is a black cloth, weed cloth I believe, available that lets water through while making it difficult for weeds to grow at all and difficult to penetrate the cloth.
Bill
Nothing beats about 6" of hay. With that thickness, seeds very seldom sprout. If they do, you just put another flake on them.
The big advantage over straw is that there is more nutrient in hay which has seeds & flowers whereas hay doesn't and has probably been treated with pesticide or herbicide so that the grain that was growing on the straw was not contaminated with weed seed.
The advantage over all the sheets or rolls of fabric is that hay will compost in place on your garden and all the nutrient will end up in your garden.
Hay is also excellent for moisture conservation.
Along with hay, you can add leaves, grass, or any vegetation. I have been using Ruth Stout's ( Google her name and you will find tons of links) gardening method for 4 years with excellent results with the exception of reduced germination of seeds in the garden. I still have to work on that. Anyone e have any ideas?
I also have extremely difficult weed problems...these weeds literally grow a foot within less than two weeks this time of year.
I am going to pull them out one more time this week, then cover all areas with non-glossy newspaper...then shred the leaves and pile the clippings in a spot where they can cook, maybe even pile them on top of the newspaper to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Hopefully this will stifle these buggers.
Dan
My favorite way, and most successful way, to keep weeds from sprouting up everywhere in my vegetable garden is to layer the area with thick (whole sections) of black/white newspaper and then mulch with either grass clippings, shredded (non-treated) hardwood mulch, or dried leaves.
I moved to a new house last fall and haven't had the time yet to develop a large area for multiple gardens. I improvised and used a bed off the back of my screened porch. It had a large clump of orange ditch lilies in the middle and the rest was weeds and old mulch. I pulled as many as I could of the large weeds and left the little ones. My kids, 11 & 13, were my helpers. I would lay out the newspaper, overlapping edges so as not to leave any gaps for weeds to pop through. The kids manned the hose and wet it down for me. This keeps it in place so it doesn't blow away. I filled a wheel barrow full of hardwood mulch and layered it on top of the newspaper. Leave a small opening at the base of each plant so water flows in freely. The rain will soak the mulch and seep right down through the newspaper. The newspaper will, over time, break down naturally.
We have had tremendous amounts of rain this summer (water tables are maxed out) and I have beautiful, lush tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans and basil without a single weed in the area. Once in a while, crab grass tries to come up through the small hole around the plant, but I just pluck it out early. It's so easy to walk through the area.
I save every newspaper I can to use in my other gardens too. I have a large hill (15' high x 120' long) that I will be clearing and planting with perennials this fall. This will use a huge amount of papers and then I will cover the area with weed block material that I pin down to keep in place. I just cut a "t" in the fabric and plant the plants into the soil below. I find that weed block material alone, does not keep the weeds down. Many times, the weeds poke up through the fabric; that's why I use the newspaper below. Weed block material is porous and allows water to penetrate, unlike black plastic. It's sold in 3' x 25', 3' x 50', or 3' x 100' usually.
Good luck.
Every newspaper I see nowadays has at least SOME color in it. Do you page through and remove those pages? Or can they safely be ignored?
Pat
I think it is probably intended to mean matt papers as opposed to glossy print. Most newsprint is printed with safe non toxic vegetable based dyes nowadays. If in doubt query the papers you most commonly use... The only thing you must be aware of with any highly cellulose based mulch such as paper/chips/cardboard etc to to ensure that there is some nitrogen fixing plants or supplementation to prevent nitrogen lock up as a mulch breaks down. This can be done by adding a little high N organic fertiliser such as dried blood/pelleted chicken manure/grass clippings etc. (Some of the above may not be available in your location. alternatives may be used.)
// Jim
Good. I *thought* so but wasn't sure. I haven't used newspapers, but would like to in the future. Yes, I'd check with the paper.
Thanks.
Pat
Ah. Thanks. Never thought to look for one.
Pat
Many newspapers use soy ink, which is safe. Look for the "made with soy ink" label in the newspaper, the label on my local paper is at the bottom left corner of the front page. Glossy pages and ads are the only ones which should be avoided
Dan
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