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Pulling off weedless winter makes spring simpleBy Lee ReichThe Associated Press This time of year, too many vegetable gardens are a landscape of autumn weeds. Goldenrod, creeping Charlie, and wild asters engulf a few struggling cabbages. With minimal time and effort, a novel approach can make a garden weedless and ready for spring planting. The conventional approach — rototilling or turning over the soil — would also leave the garden weed-free. But at a price. Churning the soil brings buried weed seeds to the surface to be awakened by light and air, leading to future weed problems, and also destroys soil’s pore structure and humus. An easier and better way to deal with weeds is to smother them. The only prerequisite of this approach is that the garden must be laid out in permanent beds and paths. Tillage is then unnecessary because the soil in beds is never compacted by being walked upon. Before weeds can be smothered, they have to be leveled with a machete, a scythe, or a lawnmower, or by just stomping them down with your feet. Leave leveled weeds in place to rot and enrich the soil. The way to kill roots and weed seeds still present is to blanket the ground with mulch. A thick layer of straw or leaves is one possibility, but the layer needs to be very, very thick. A more effective mulch for killing weeds is a few layers of newspaper. (Use only black-and-white pages to avoid contaminating the soil with heavy metals from colored inks.) A thickness of four sheets of newspaper, with adjacent sheets overlapped, will effectively smother weeds. The newspaper needs something to hold it in place. The ideal covering for beds is an inch or two of weed-free compost, into which any transplant or seed can be planted directly. But any weed-free organic material, such as straw, manure, or leaves, will suffice. Next spring, transplants and large seeds will be able to be planted directly into the organic material covering over the newspaper. Small seeds can be planted in a slit in the newspaper, then covered with potting soil. Lay wood chips, straw, or pine needles in paths. By the end of next summer, weeds beneath the newspaper, the newspaper itself, and any organic material covering the newspaper will have decomposed to become plant-nourishing humus. From then on, care of this “weedless garden” involves nothing more than an annual surface addition of fertilizer and organic matter (compost in beds, wood chips, straw, etc. in paths) — and regular but minimal weeding. [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
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