Latest Project: Heavy Mulching

The weeds are really ramping up their growth now that the weather has decided that it's summer.  I have been trying to keep up with the beds themselves and have been doing a decent job of it.  The earlier mulches that I laid down after planting really seem to have made a difference  in the amount ot weeds that pop up in a bed.  The heaviest mulched beds have the fewest weeds.

The areas that I have had trouble keeping up with are the walking paths between the beds.  These paths were mulched with straw shortly after the garden was tilled, so there haven't been a ton of weeds.  There have been some pretty windy days that blew alot of this mulch layer away, and in those areas, I can pull weeds every day and not keep up.

My answer to that of course is to add more mulch!  I was lucky enough to score a truckload of free grass clippings and had it delivered right to my own driveway.  This big pile is going to cover a lot of ground in the garden and should drastically reduce the amount of weeding that I have to do in the pathways from now on.

The first thing I did in each pathway was to weed mercilessly.  I pulled up every green non garden thing that I could see, doing the best I could to get the whole plants out of the ground, roots and all.  This is one of the paths before and after weeding:

Once I eliminated as many weeds as possible I then added a layer of mulch over the path that was several inches thick

 The thick mulch will block light from reaching weed seeds in the soil and will help to trap moisture in the soil between the rows.  It will be nice to not walk in mud anymore when I walk through the garden after it's been watered.  The grass clippings will slowly break down on the soil and add nutrients for the surrounding garden plants.  By next year I should have a nice little layer of humus building up in my garden which will help it grow big and tasty!