How to Eradicate Weeds from Garden Organically?

[rainbowgardener]

Yes. I just have regular grass. When I built my raised beds, I put cardboard down in the bottom of the boxes. It smothered the grass for awhile. But that was two years ago and the cardboard is long gone. I have grass coming up in all the beds, travelling in from the lawn outside them.

For your purposes, you could probably get carpet remnant strips free or very cheap. Lay them down carpet side down in your paths. It makes a nice, non--muddy walking surface and it will kill the grass in the pathways. Once it is gone from the pathways, it will be a lot harder to come up in the raised beds.

[productivegardener]

Mix a lot of salt in water. Water the weeds with them. Make sure you don't spray the water or pour it in large area, that might spoil the other plants as well. Soon, the weeds will die from excess salt and the dilute the salt in soil by pouring simple water for a few days.

Please, please, don't do this to your soil. This is a great idea for fence row weeds, but keep those excess salts out of the garden. Your soil and your plants will thank you.

[Gary350]

Cover your whole garden with something that will block sunlight, cardboard is free it needs to be covered with, boards, bricks, rocks, tires, anything heavy to keep it from blowing away. Keep soil covered all winter several months of no sunlight everything will be dead by spring. I did this once 40 years ago on my garden when I removed the cardboard there were no plants just soil. I tried this once with blue plastic tarps it did not work I guess enough sunlight gets through for grass to grow.

[productivegardener]

Another interesting thing to try is solarization. Cover a large area with a piece of heavy (3 - 6 mil) clear plastic. In my experience, tarps and black plastic do not work nearly as well as clear plastic. Under an opaque covering the grass and weeds seem to hibernate for a while and don't immediately die. Under a clear cover, they try to grow but are scorched but the sun. A hot August sun (in USDA Zone 6) will kill most grass under clear plastic in two weeks. Quack grass may take longer to succumb and lower temperatures and cloudy days also slow down the process.

[imafan26]

Some of you might be able to rent a goat. They actually like weeds and lettuce but don't really like grass. Solarization does not work well in cooler months, it works better the hottest time of the year July-August. It will not kill nutsedge, but it is ok for annual weeds, so is covering the weeds to block light with cardboard or carpet.

I have put cardboard and weed block in some parts of my yard that I have managed to clear of weeds. I still get a few weeds coming through the seams and where the fabric is worn and along the edges, but it is easier to pull out a few and put in a patch than to keep wading through the weeds after it rains. The weeds so far are not coming through the sections where I put thick cardboard under the weed cloth. I did have a hard time tacking the weed cloth down because it was hard to get the staples through the cardboard. Where I have older weed block, the weeds actually started growing on the surface, the smaller weeds come up easier, but some of the weeds have already gone through the weed block so I have to clear it and put on another layer.

[DarrenP]

I know this is an old thread, but this is my take on weeds.
We have raised beds of various kinds, and it seems the taller the bed, the less chance of weeds. Also, mulch is the best suppressant. If you decide to use cardboard under the mulch, maybe lay out some aged manure first. This gives the soil some nutrients while the cardboard breaks down.
Plastic, tarps, and weed mats are all bad for the soil, as they don't let water or nutrients through.
If you can come up with the best way to minimise the weeds, then pull up any that do come up. Composting is one option, as long as they haven't gone to seed as mentioned above. I feed them to our chickens; you just need to be aware of what ones are bad for them. Even our rabbits eat some weeds.

[imafan26]

It really depends on your weeds. Nutsedge can poke through newspaper and most woven and plastic weed block. It has a harder time getting through non woven landscape fabric but it can survive for years. I have tried mulch, but the slugs and snails like to hide in that too. I don't have a lot of leaves to work with for mulch. There are very few deciduous trees in my yard. The ones that do are not clean as they have rust and other fungal issues so they don't make good mulch. Cardboard does help and so does cutting up the plastic bags the potting soil comes in and using that around the plants in pots as a weed barrier and to hold moisture in the pot as well.