Weed Control

Weed control is pretty easy if you use the proper materials and you use them right from the start. We use a black fabric mulch that works great. If you live in an area that has calm winds most of the time, you can also use old newspapers, straw, or regular wood or plastic mulch as well. We use the fabric mulch because our high winds promptly take any loose mulch over to the next county.

Here’s what we do:

After conditioning the garden soil by adding compost and other materials to amend it, we lay a piece of black fabric mulch over the garden bed or container.

Than we stake the mulch down with large metal garden staples. You can buy these at any hardware store.

Then when we are ready to plant our seedlings in the garden, we use a sharp knife to cut an "x" in the fabric mulch where we want to put the seedling.

We fold back the cloth, create a hole, and insert the seedling. Then we fold the cloth back to its original position. The seeding sticks out and can get the sun on its leaves, but the dirt around it is shadowed, which effectively shuts out the sun for any weed seeds hiding in the soil.

We rarely ever have to weed in our garden when we do this.

Done with Weed Control, back to Vegetable Gardening