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great mulch!
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Posted by shexsellsxshells 9 (My Page) on Mon, Feb 5, 07 at 13:19
| I've lived in our home for 2 years now, and I grew tired of weeding my beds once a week. So I thought long and hard about a way to smother my weeds for free. It came to me finally.
I took old newspaper and laid it around my plants so that way they would still get water, but the weeds would get no sunlight. Then (since newspaper isn't too appealing in your yard) I took dead leaves and grasses and placed it on top. "Why," you may be wondering as to the newpaper when I could have just placed the leaves and grass. Well, the grass always dropped seeds into my yard, causing more weeds for me to pull. So, in conclusion, my experiment worked well :) |
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RE: great mulch!
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| You forgot to add the benefit of the newspapers is that it also will break down and add organic matter to your soil, along with the leaves. I tried this same technique a couple years ago with an area next to the driveway that was overgrown with weeds. I laid down a couple layers of cardboard, then 8-10 layers of newspaper and topped the whole thing with about 4" of sandy loam. Then planted flowers there. Everything grew like weeds, but it wasn't weeds, it was lantana, dahlias, scabiosa and daylilies. Last fall I had to move the whole flower bed when we had the driveway graded and the soil where the cardboard and newspaper had been was rich, dark earth chock full of earthworms. Now that's great mulch too! Cheryl |
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