Those weeds probably are growing from your organic matter. You could have brought in new weed seeds with the grass clippings, compost, manure, etc. And any seeds that blow in and land on that area will sprout, too. They should be very easy to pull if your OM is nice and moist.

Karen

>"I was just out there and noticed there are a few viney shoots coming up!"

Well, as you said there are a "few viney shoots coming up."

That'a a good thing. If you said there were thousands of shoots then there would be a problem. As Ruth Stout, my old sheet mulching guru would say, just throw some more mulch on them or pull them and let them be more mulch.

Since you said "viney shoots," bindweed comes immediately to mind. That is a plant that seemingly no amount of mulch will kill and one's only hope is persistant and immediate removal of new shoots. You may have a similar plant testing your patience. (Those who tout "solarization" to kill weeds are apparently clueless about the depths that bindweed roots will go: up to 40' deep.)

Mulching is not a guarantee that you will have no weeds, but you should find it a whole lot easier than if you didn't. Those new weeds should be easy to dispatch, as Karen said.

Wayne

I can trace the vines down through the weed barrier layer (cardboard/newsprint) so I'm fairly sure that this plant lives, and is coming up through the barrier. I guess what you're implying is to weed out whatever comes up. If it gets real bad, should I till everything back in and start over with double barrier layers? Or till and create smaller beds with fabric type barrier?

Thanks to you both!

stay away from the fabric barrier. I'd just pull them and put in back in the compost pile to cook.

If it is just the viney weeds coming up, you could try to paint them with round up. That would kill them, roots and all.

Me, I would just pull, and keep pulling, and keep adding mulch. In fact I just prepared two smaller sized beds in my yard, for planting next spring. First my DH dug a trench around the outside, then we tossed the sod he dug out into the center, right on top of the grass. Over that we layered about 2 or 3 layers thick, cardboard. Over that We piled on the organics, old leaves that were collected behind the barn from years past, grass clippings, shredded paper, etc, up to about 12" to 15" deep. Then we mowed the lawn, put the grass clippings on, and layered a thin layer of topsoil on top (to keep everything weighed down, and from blowing around the yard)

I have done this the past 3 years in a row, and in the spring it's perfect for planting. Granted over the summer it settles more, and some plants I have had to reset deeper. But I have very few problems with weeds.

Jenny P

What Ruth Stout did was cover any new growth she did not want with more mulch which deprived that new growth of access to sunlight which it needs to grow. Do that often enough and eventually the root system will die from lack of nutrients and that "weed" will stop growing.
There is no real good reason to spend money on plant killers.

I always think that it's counter productive to put light blocking, impenetrable, inert mulches on the bottom of a "lasagna" bed and then covering them with fertile layers of manure and compost. It makes a lot more sense to me to put the fertile layers on the bottom and the light blocking, weed impenetrable newspaper layers on the top. I cover the newspaper with an inert mulch for pretty, usually straw or leaves.

Disagreeing with the infamous Annpat, do I have the nerve? If you put the nice juicy stuff on the bottom, the weeds grow right up through it, very happily. You need the thick impenetrable cardboard sort of thing on the bottom to smother what is below. After it mostly dies off, the cardboard is rotted through and everything is beautiful.

Where I live the weeds are pretty serious (especially the quack grass). So even with raised beds with solid sides and lots of cardboard on the bottom you have to be vigilant for shoots growing under the edge and up through the cardboard. But still it is so much easier than weeding every bit of the weeds out by hand. (I am organic so no weed killer for me in the garden.)

Marcia

Solarizing needs to be done with clear plastic. The area should be well watered first and the plastic held down on all sides. Penny

I wouldn't use plastic or landscape fabric as a layer in sheet composting. Both are inorganic and would be a real pain to dig through, weed around, or remove at a future point. I've used clear pastic by itself to solarize, but only for 1-2 months, and then removed it.

For lasagne beds, I always put down a paper layer first, such as cardboard, newspapers, paper leaf bags, pizza boxes etc. Then I layer organic materials on top like coffee grounds, leaves, and grass clippings. That works pretty well to smother the weeds I'm dealing with - most Vinca and crabgrass.

For really intractable weeds, how about adding an additional layer of cardboard in the middle of the lasagne bed? After putting down the first layer of cardboard followed by organic materials, you could then add a 2nd layer of cardboard and more organics. This will not only double smother the weeds, but have the additional benefit of holding in the moisture in the organic material below the cardboard. That is the idea behind Interbay mulch.

I gotta disagree with led zep disagreeing with me. :]
If your upper mulch is impenetrable paper, no weeds can grow through it. The cardboard or newspaper on the bottom people start out all right, but then they put umpteen layers of materials on top that are fertile and support life. I've even heard of people putting soil in their lasagna layers.

Annpat, after reading yours, I start to get confused. Lasagna bed need NO soil? Just wait for the OM to breakdown? But I have read some inputs that can plant straight onto it. Isn't it better to straight away put a layer of 6" partially done compost on whatever bed for planting? To be honest, I am tempted to do just this!

The idea is that the lasagna layers break down and the plants planted in it will send roots into the ground under the decomposing ingredients. My objection to the method is that 12 inches of any material will kill the sod under it. Newspaper and cardboard do not kill sod any better or faster than any other mulch. Where newspaper does work better is on the top of a garden bed. If you put newspaper or cardboard on top of a garden, nothing growing in the medium beneath can penetrate the newspaper---until it breaks down. If you put manure or soil or compost on top of the newspaper, those layers will support weeds.

As for solarizing, it kills all life in the top layer of soil, beneficial or otherwise, And for it to work in your area, it kills a year of gardening since it takes months of the hottest, sunniest weather to be effective.

And, if your vines roots goes deeper than the top few inches, they will be back and you will have wasted a sheet of perfectly good plastic and a year of non-gardening.

Wayne

Hmm.. Annpat makes sense here. However, since I already started my lasagna bed with cardboard on the bottom and it's thick now I think I'm going to put more cardboard on now.

I was tired last night. Lasagna is just deep sheet mulching. And deep mulches, if they are light impenetrable, will kill the sod beneath them no matter what order you layer them. The most impenetrable layers---your paper layers do not need to be on the bottom to kill the sod.

The problem arises, not from your sod, but when your top layers are fertile and seeds in those materials start sprouting. I don't get a single weed when I use (unshredded) newspaper as an upper layer, weighed down and covered with something fairly inert---straw, seaweed, leaves. I only use a mulch over the newspaper to hide it and keep it in place.

About too much of a good thing---it depends on the size of your beds, of course, and maybe your climate, but in Maine I have never been able to overapply soil amendments. I've deep mulched these most recent beds annually for 20 years.

Last year I got pretty enthused gathering compostables and turned an area of lawn into a giant compost pile---not because I have any future plan for that space, but just because I had access to tons of rough compost materials from the Brewer dump. The pile consisted of stuffed leaf bags emptied shoulder to shoulder, over 40 pumpkins, about 7 contractor bags of seaweed, several bags of pine needles, three or four bales of straw. It was almost three feet deep in material. It shrank considerably over the winter and grew pumpkins. I intend to keep piling stuff up on this 15 x 20' area (or another) whether I ever use it or not. My topsoil was robbed from me during construction and replaced with gravel. I am opposed to buying topsoil since I now understand where topsoil comes from, so I am trying to undo the damage to this formerly untouched land by reclaiming it over time by creating large deeply mulched areas. I don't rob my compost bins for these reclaimed areas.

Oh...I engaged in highjack, didn't I?

Annpat - Where does topsoil come from? I honestly have no idea. I have an area at my mom's house (no more room here) right now that has three large piles of rough compost materials and I'm still collecting. I'm thrilled every time I get to add to it. I can't wait until after Halloween. I really want 40+ pumpkins. I think my kid would have a fun time smashing them up with me... he's 4.

oops.. I think I contributed to the hijack.

I'm sorry, gnomey, I got lost. The rest of you, forgive me for bringing this back to the top of the page.

My theory about topsoil is that it's removed from land, often from new construction, carted off, mixed with gravel and resold, as topsoil or loam. In my case, my chocolaty, virgin soil was removed---as much as they could justify (I actually paid for the removal)---and garbage soil was resold to me. Had someone advised me, I would have insisted that the topsoil be piled up on my property.

There is a piece of property near here that you (well not you, me) can see from the road as you (I) drive by. (I saw a moose there one time.) I drove by one day two years ago and saw a huge crew of dumptrucks and bulldozers stripping off about 6 acres of meadow in front of a house to a depth of about 2 feet. The owner sold her topsoil. That meadow is a mess now consisting of deep cracks in the susoil, and there still is almost no growth there---in contrast to the other side of the driveway which is a matching 6 acres, so far still a lovely wildflower meadow.

"Where does topsoil come from? I honestly have no idea."

It comes from decomposing organic matter, BIG BUTT the only value a layer of top soil has is if it is living. By that I mean with plants and organisms, remove these two things and the "top soil" will compact and not be like a living organism similar to coral reefs.

Sheet composting will revive an area and keep it working, if you stop growing something like trees or grass is will decline. Adding organic matter to a growing area will see to it that the area continues be the be like a living organism or allow it to go fallow, then weeds, grass, tree, perennials, etc will come in and fix it over a long term.

esther_opal - I actually meant where does it come from when people buy loads of it. I think Annpat cleared that up for me. It's disgusting to think that when you pay builders, you're paying them to rob you. I agree, if I ever build, I'm telling them it has to be piled up, it's not to be shipped off and resold, leaving me to rebuild more over the years.

"Topsoil" is simply the top 4 inches of soil. About the only difference between the "topsoil" you would spend lots of money on and the soil you have already in place would be the amount of organic matter that might be in the purchased "topsoil". There is nothing magical, or mysterious, about "topsoil" it is a mixture of the minerals and organic matter that make up soil. Many people mistakenly think that they are getting loam, a specific soil type, when the buy "topsoil" but they seldom do.
Concentrate on adding organic matter to the soil you have and you will have the best "topsoil" around.