Pathway between raised garden bed question.

[pgaturfgrass]

I live in Chicago and have 5 raised garden beds. What is the best crushed stone or pebbles with texture to place around beds for walkway paths. Currently we have grass in between them. Please let me know. Thanks in advance.

[ButterflyLady29]

Pebbles won't pack down, got pebbles in my driveway and they keep popping out of the soil and squish around when walked/driven on. Crushed gravel should pack down.

So your choice, do you want them to pack down or remain loose and soft?

[imafan26]

I just use weed block and mulch.
If you use pea gravel you have to tamp it down and usually it needs to be a 4 inch layer. You would also have to put edgings on the end to contain it.
I have used pavers around my garden because it was very muddy especially after I watered. It works o.k. but it is not a mortared in walkway so the weeds grow between the pavers. I was pulling them but roundup does a better job since I can't get the roots without having to pry up the pavers.

[applestar]

Are you looking for a very landscaped appearance? This is vegetable gardening forum, so I'm assuming you are growing edibles and won't be using herbicide around the raised beds. I'm thinking gravel would make it fairly intensive to care for....

Personally I'm with imafan. I use flattened cardboard, even pizzaboxes, and bagged mulch for areas that need to look good and organic yard debris -- grass clippings, storm sticks, tree and shrub trimmings, fall leaves, wood shavings, pulled weeds -- for everywhere else.

I tried gravel in an area once, and then realized they are a pain. You need a fairly significant depth like imafan mentioned, or mud and muddy water will ooze up. Debris fall in the cracks, weed seeds quickly root between them and are harder to pull out, "pretty" gravel quickly turned dirty and mildewy.... Once the weeds got ahead of me, I couldn't use the normal weeding tools in the gravel. Then when I changed my mind, the gravel turned out to be nearly impossible to dig up and out (you can't get them all out, no way) and the landscaping fabric needed to keep them from settling into the soil beneath was horrid to take up.

Cardboard and organic mulches break down but enrich the soil underneath in the process (earthworms LOVE the cardboard) -- you know the plants in the raised beds can and would benefit from growing roots beyond the perimeter of the raised beds if you build them without bottoms, right? -- and I'm left with "top soil" that I can scrape up to use in the beds. Once scraped down to the clay subsoil, I lay new cardboard and mulch.

Slugs and other bugs -- pill bugs, sow bugs -- hide under there, too, but predators quickly follow, like ground beetles. I can also flip up the cardboard and pick off the slugs while the cardboard is still sturdy.

If you decide to go with cardboard, you don't even have to take up the grass/sod. Just cover them with the cardboard and smother them, then be diligent about getting rid of the ones that come up from the edges for the first year (a sharp knife will do -- I use an old kitchen knife and cut below the soil surface). If you are laying down gravel, you will have to make sure the grass is gone first or they will come back.

[imafan26]

Mulch in the paths do a couple of things for me. One it keeps the weeds down and weeds in the mulch are easier to pull as long as you don't let them get established, and secondly it makes the paths less slippery. I tried just using weedblock, but it is easy to damage and still got muddy. I put in the brick path, because I had left over bricks and sections of bricks and even some capstones. My path is not decorative, it is functional. Before it was very muddy and slippery and the pavers help with that but I still have weeds growing between the pavers. Roundup is only used on the pathway and I use a small bottle or paint the weeds with a disposable paint brush. It lasts longer than weed whacking the pavers and weed whacking bricks usually mean I have to change the spool on the weed whacker more frequently which is never fun to do. Weed whacking doesn't get the roots and I have weeds that will come back from the roots even more vigorously like Fukien tea, asparagus fern, bind weed, and nut sedge. If I round up the weeds before the roots get large, I don't have problems with translocation. I have to wait for a time it is not windy and I have to move or cover the plants nearby with painter's plastic to protect them. Of all the herbicides, plain glyphosate has the least residual or environmental consequence. And my weeds are so out of control, I cannot keep up with them. I would have longer term better weed control with 2,4 D, but it does persist. However, if you are doing more organic, or your weeds are easier to manage you may not want to do that.

[applestar]

I put a WHOLE BUNCH of woody sticks, corn stalks, etc. In particularly muddy areas. Sometimes so much that I don't really need the cardboard. Whole branches trimmed from shrubs and trees for example. With some of them -- like Elderberry, Rose of Sharon, Red Osier Dogwood, etc. -- I have to pull them up and move them around a couple of times because the sneaky branches will root in the mud. But most of the time regular trampling will make them be mulch.

-- if you have a chipper/shredder, you could probably make your own woody mulch that would look more like mulch... I don't have one, it's always on my wishlist, but so far have managed without.

[ccar2000]

I have a chipper/shredder and that gives me access to good mulch. I have a layer about 4-5" deep and it stays pretty weed-free. I can run the garden cart over it and walk on it year around. If you do not have access to your own mulch some tree maintenance services have it at their yard, maybe you can make a deal with them. Their chunks are kind of big but they eventually lay down after you have been walking on them, I did not need any weed block, just a little hoeing to keep it up.