After reading that it can grow to 6 feet tall and is covered with nasty spikes, it seemed like a good opportunity to try sheet mulching - they will be spaced far apart, and who wants to weed around something like that? I only had 1 newspaper, but I had a couple of big cardboard boxes, so I just cultivated small patches where the plants would go, and cut matching holes in the cardboard, like this:
[img]https://i1167.photobucket.com/albums/q639/FrugalK/The%20Great%20Cardoon%20Experiment/cardoon1.jpg[/img]
Then I anchored them down with rocks that I had left over from down-sizing a too big flower garden in the front yard, then covered the cardboard with a thin layer of soil (also from the front garden) and mulch, just to look nicer:
[img]https://i1167.photobucket.com/albums/q639/FrugalK/The%20Great%20Cardoon%20Experiment/cardoon3.jpg[/img]
Then the plants (started indoors) went in:
[img]https://i1167.photobucket.com/albums/q639/FrugalK/The%20Great%20Cardoon%20Experiment/cardoon2.jpg[/img]
And now we wait.

Any suggestions? This is the first time I've tried sheet mulching - it seems too good to be true - just cover over all the weeds and grass with cardboard (or newspaper) and that'll stop em. Well, we'll see.