Thinking of planting a garden weed control question

[dieselscout80]

Grass clippings and cardboard.

 

[2manyrocks]

Leaves that have been shredded going through a either a lawn vac or mower bagger tend to compact together pretty well. Grass clippings that have been allowed to decompose are also good.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^^
Just make sure that you don't use clippings from a lawn which has been treated for weeds.

Newspaper or any other paper medium will rot down very quickly. The OP's idea is as good as any, although I don't know of any weed cover sold which is also biodegradable. For a few years I used a piece of black plastic as SR suggests. You will be surprised at how much warmer the soil gets under that. One year my tomatoes got blight (As did everybody elses). I pulled the plants, rolled them up in the plastic and hauled it all off.
Don't use clear plastic, it acts just like a greenhouse and the weeds will thrive under it.

This year I am either planting annual rye in my rows and mowing it, or putting sawmill slabs down to keep the weeds out.

 

[DJ54]

How do you keep the leaves from blowing away?

I gather them in the Fall, and usually a couple good rains and most stay in place in the pile. Last Fall we had a dry spell and some high winds, so I set a lawn sprinkler on top of the pile for an hour or so. That's the first time I had to so that in the 10-12 years I've been doing it. You'll lose a few, but not many. Fall rains here settle them down. Come Spring they are pretty damp and stay in place. Again you may lose a few, but not enough to notice. A couple good soaking rains mats them down, and pretty well locks them together. The key is to put them down 4" to 6" deep. Makes it nice after summer rains when tomatoes are needing sprayed, or ripe, and you can walk on the mat without sinking to your ankles in mud.

This is probably the best picture of how well it works from Aug. 2017. Plants were set out late due to a wet Spring and had lots of rain throughout the Summer. I did get a few days to mulch, cage, then do a Florida weave around the cages to hold them up. The Celebrities I plant are very heavy producer's and will even break down the heavy duty cages. These were way behind compared to a normal year and were just starting to bloom. With all of the rain we had that Summer I'm sure weeds would have been very difficult to control.

2019 was the last year I got a lot of leaves from the neighbor with the lawn service. Almost had enough to cover the whole garden. His wife saw how well it worked, and how it mellowed the soil, so she gets the bulk of them now. Gotta' keep Momma' happy. So, I gather what I can from the other neighbor's and one I let use the leaf vac to pick his up, and he brings them down. He's just happy to get rid of them.

 

[DJ54]

There is another good way to control most weeds without mulching but only lasts for 6-8 weeks, but you can reapply when weeds start showing again. If you have a feed mill in the area that grinds cattle feed, most have corn gluten pellets, a by-product of processed corn for ethanol. I have a local mill that will run the pellets through their hammer mill and grind it into meal. Corn gluten pellets have in the past ran around $200 per ton, and I would normally get 500 lbs., and they would charge $5 to grind.

It's the very same as Organic Preen. You can find it on the internet if you've never heard of it. If you look at the ingredient list in the bottom corner, it states 100% corn gluten meal. Preen Natural Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer Open this link to see it. At a store in a 25 lb. bag it will run you around $1.50 per lb. Having a feed mill the grind pellets into meal you'd have around 12 cents a lb.

It does need to be worked into the top 1-1/2" of soil, and needs rain, or a good watering to activate it. You'll need to cultivate around plants until they get good roots established. So you cannot treat when you plant your garden seeds. The way it works is, it will let a seed germinate, but not form roots, and the weeds die. So it is a post plant natural herbicide. And it only kills weeds that come up from seeds not from rhizomes. The only common weeds it won't kill here are Purslane, and Bull Pea vines, because they come up from rhizomes/established roots. Corn Gluten Meal also has about 10% Nitrogen content so it helps boost plant growth too.

I'll have to wait and see how far the leaves I have will go this far, before I decide if I'm going to use any. It is a little work intensive to put down, much like the leaf mulch, but worth the weekly work it saves.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^^^
I had an unopened jug of the organic Preen in my shed. The squirrels or raccoons loved it, I found the empty container about 100 yards away with a hole chewed through it.

 

[RidgeTopWVA]

^^^^^
I had an unopened jug of the organic Preen in my shed. The squirrels or raccoons loved it, I found the empty container about 100 yards away with a hole chewed through it.

I would say the racoons are what took took the jug