Hello,
First post on this forum. I was hoping to find some thoughts on recovering a very weedy garden space. I live about an hour from my mom's house. She was widowed about 2 years ago, and I helped her plant my step-dad's old garden bed. Unfortunately, I'm an hour away and I can only spend about 2 hours a week. She's in her 70's, and I can't have her digging around and doing the heavy lifting.
Anyway, I have a severe weed problem--much of it this horrible crab grass. I dug and dug today and barely touched it. What terrible stuff!
I've never used cardboard/newsprint for mulch, but from some reading they claim it can choke out any plant material underneath.
Has anyone had success doing this? What I was thinking was, just get through the season (weeds and all), and after pulling the plants, try to cover the area in 2 or 3 layers of cardboard, or several layers of news paper and cardboard. Then just let it work it's magic into the fall. Hopefully that would be enough to have the vegetable material dead by spring.
What we were thinking was to lay the cardboard, and the space with several inches of leaves from the number of maples on the property. Let it rot/choke the weeds out, and then in spring till it under and start over.
Anyone have some non-poison methods for killing some really aggressive/nasty weeds like crab grass?
It's actually a nice garden space. It has about an 8" concrete boarder--the foundation of an old garage that long since collapsed. It has not been maintained very well in recent years. (mostly due to the advancing age of my parents). I was hoping this fall to just load up as much organic material as I can find. Leaves, compost (from the municipal recycling place), maybe work out a deal with the neighbor for some manure. Heap it on, let it break down over the winter, and in the spring either till it under, or go with a "lasagna garden". I've read a lot about the options--but honestly have extremely little experience with garden growing. A lot with patio/container veggies, but not with a big space like this.
First post on this forum. I was hoping to find some thoughts on recovering a very weedy garden space. I live about an hour from my mom's house. She was widowed about 2 years ago, and I helped her plant my step-dad's old garden bed. Unfortunately, I'm an hour away and I can only spend about 2 hours a week. She's in her 70's, and I can't have her digging around and doing the heavy lifting.
Anyway, I have a severe weed problem--much of it this horrible crab grass. I dug and dug today and barely touched it. What terrible stuff!
I've never used cardboard/newsprint for mulch, but from some reading they claim it can choke out any plant material underneath.
Has anyone had success doing this? What I was thinking was, just get through the season (weeds and all), and after pulling the plants, try to cover the area in 2 or 3 layers of cardboard, or several layers of news paper and cardboard. Then just let it work it's magic into the fall. Hopefully that would be enough to have the vegetable material dead by spring.
What we were thinking was to lay the cardboard, and the space with several inches of leaves from the number of maples on the property. Let it rot/choke the weeds out, and then in spring till it under and start over.
Anyone have some non-poison methods for killing some really aggressive/nasty weeds like crab grass?
It's actually a nice garden space. It has about an 8" concrete boarder--the foundation of an old garage that long since collapsed. It has not been maintained very well in recent years. (mostly due to the advancing age of my parents). I was hoping this fall to just load up as much organic material as I can find. Leaves, compost (from the municipal recycling place), maybe work out a deal with the neighbor for some manure. Heap it on, let it break down over the winter, and in the spring either till it under, or go with a "lasagna garden". I've read a lot about the options--but honestly have extremely little experience with garden growing. A lot with patio/container veggies, but not with a big space like this.