Weeds. I *hate* them. Apparently the feeling isn't mutual, because weeds seem to *love* me. Or at least they love my garden, which means that every gardening season I spend an inordinately large amount of time pulling them out, often while cursing quietly under my breath. In the beds, weed vanquishing isn't too tough of a job - the soil is nice and loose and the roots of the weeds don't really have anything to grab onto. The paths of the garden are an entirely different story though. Because they get heavy traffic, they are compacted and weeds and their roots grow with wild abandon. Trying to pull them out by hand is a waste of time, all you walk away with is the leaves while the roots stay and send up new shoots to mock you. A shovel is more effective, but also a heck of a lot more work and it leaves ugly pits all over the walkways. Using a garden hoe is also an idea, but it seems to scrape up a lot more dirt than it does weeds.
After two summers of grumbling, and cursing the weeds that take over the entire garden, I was done. This year I told Matthew that we had to do something, anything, to make weeding less of a nightmare. After talking to friends and searching the Internet, we decided on newspaper for a weed barrier, covered by wood chips. Determined for this project to be free, I starting looking for sources for the materials. I had a shop-owner offer me a bunch of free cardboard, which I jumped on because its much thicker and longer lasting than newspaper. I remembered that I had seen a tree trimming truck in my neighborhood last year, and that when I had stopped to ask what they did with the wood chips they shredded up, they said they gave them away for free. I called about 5 companies and got our name on their wait lists. Then....we waited. And waited...and waited. I was starting to worry when I saw weeds beginning to sprout that we were never going to get the wood chips, and we would instead be battling weeds again all summer long.
Then on Monday I got the call - the tree trimming company had a "big" load of chips for me, and could they come and dump them in my driveway. Heck yes! I was out grocery shopping at the time, and boy was I ever surprised to see this in my driveway when I got home:
I had no idea that when they said big, they meant BIG. But I had already made up my mind that there would be no weeds in the paths this year, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. This was the garden before:
I had to re-rake the paths to make the edges of the beds straight, and then I cut and laid down the cardboard:
That took a good part of the day by itself, so the next day I got started early with moving the bark chips. Its about 150 feet round trip from our driveway to our garden, and during the 7 hours that I worked that day, I made about 120 trips back and forth. It was a rare hot day, and I was thoroughly exhausted by the time Matthew got home from work. And there was still about 2/3 of the pile of wood chips left! Luckily Matthew had the next day off, so we worked together to finish the garden. I think it looks so nice, and with about 5 inches of wood chips covering that cardboard, I am feeling pretty confident that those weeds wont stand a chance this year!
With so much of the pile left, we had to find somewhere to put it all. We took this area under the fruit trees:
And made it pretty:
We also topped off the playground wood chips, and used the last of the pile to give the chicken pen an update:
It took us about 8 hours that second day to get it all finished, but we finally did it. I am so happy with how it all turned out, and really glad that we wont have to do this again for at least a few more years. Now we can just sit back, wait for the sunshine, and enjoy our (mostly) weed free garden!
After two summers of grumbling, and cursing the weeds that take over the entire garden, I was done. This year I told Matthew that we had to do something, anything, to make weeding less of a nightmare. After talking to friends and searching the Internet, we decided on newspaper for a weed barrier, covered by wood chips. Determined for this project to be free, I starting looking for sources for the materials. I had a shop-owner offer me a bunch of free cardboard, which I jumped on because its much thicker and longer lasting than newspaper. I remembered that I had seen a tree trimming truck in my neighborhood last year, and that when I had stopped to ask what they did with the wood chips they shredded up, they said they gave them away for free. I called about 5 companies and got our name on their wait lists. Then....we waited. And waited...and waited. I was starting to worry when I saw weeds beginning to sprout that we were never going to get the wood chips, and we would instead be battling weeds again all summer long.
Then on Monday I got the call - the tree trimming company had a "big" load of chips for me, and could they come and dump them in my driveway. Heck yes! I was out grocery shopping at the time, and boy was I ever surprised to see this in my driveway when I got home:
I had no idea that when they said big, they meant BIG. But I had already made up my mind that there would be no weeds in the paths this year, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. This was the garden before:
I had to re-rake the paths to make the edges of the beds straight, and then I cut and laid down the cardboard:
That took a good part of the day by itself, so the next day I got started early with moving the bark chips. Its about 150 feet round trip from our driveway to our garden, and during the 7 hours that I worked that day, I made about 120 trips back and forth. It was a rare hot day, and I was thoroughly exhausted by the time Matthew got home from work. And there was still about 2/3 of the pile of wood chips left! Luckily Matthew had the next day off, so we worked together to finish the garden. I think it looks so nice, and with about 5 inches of wood chips covering that cardboard, I am feeling pretty confident that those weeds wont stand a chance this year!
With so much of the pile left, we had to find somewhere to put it all. We took this area under the fruit trees:
And made it pretty:
We also topped off the playground wood chips, and used the last of the pile to give the chicken pen an update:
It took us about 8 hours that second day to get it all finished, but we finally did it. I am so happy with how it all turned out, and really glad that we wont have to do this again for at least a few more years. Now we can just sit back, wait for the sunshine, and enjoy our (mostly) weed free garden!