What do you do with the weeds in the garden

[MysticGardener67]

A nice 3-4 inch deep layer of mulch.. Straw (but do NOT use HAY, it is full of weed seeds!), hardwood mulch, rotted sawdust , good compost, salt marsh hay if available. I know gardeners who recycle carpet scraps or cardboard as mulchin materials

If you are starfting a new garden, then there are couple of ways to go. I wouldn't reccomend a wholesale spraying of herbicides.. It is not the responsible thing to do. Herbicides are a tool of absolute last resort.

Pull the big weeds by hand, use a shovel if you need to. Dandilions and Burdock have deep yet brittle taproots and can resprout from even the tiniest pieces. get all the root! As for the rest, you can kill them off by either overheating them or depriving them of light.

I have learned that the most effective way to do this is by layying down the thick black plastic sheeting often sold as a weed control product. Umm.. Check your local hardware giant, lowes, Homedepot and the like. While you are there, you will need to find something called "sod staples" these are just what they sound like, oversized wire staples that were first used to achor down sections of turf sod. They work really well to secure lots of other things to the ground.

Roll out the blacjk plastic, secure with the sod staples and wait about 2 months. The plastice will starve the young plants of air, deprive them of moisture and sunlight and the solar heating will make it all work that much faster.

After the solariztion of the plot, you can pull up the staples and reuse them later ( I like using them to anchor irrigation lines) and fold up the plastic for reuse as well.

lightly till the soil no more than 6 inches, plant then apply the mulch. Again nice deep 3-4 inch layer.

Your garden will not be weed free... HOWEVER you will be spending far less time weeding and the weeds you do find will be much easier to control