The Newspaper is Indeed Biodegradable

This is a post about weeds, and weeding. There is (or WAS!) a very nefarious weed patch in the garden that I had neglected in favor of weeding near the veggie plants. Here is a quite embarassing photo of it. As i have stated before, after killing all of the old weeds with Round-up, the new weeds that have very prevalently emerged are nefarious grasslike weed.

These are SUCH a pain in the neck to dig up b/c you have to dig up each individual blade, and they all have a root! Today we tried to use a rake as a hoe and just turn up the dirt, then pull up the weeds easily. This did not work. However, Mister Siren was helpin in the garden today, so thankfully I left him to this section and I did other tasks.

There were many to attend to. For instance, the inspection and replacement of the newspaper mulch. When I originally layed it down, it immediately improved weed conditions in the garden. I did a 4-sheet thickness on the recommendation of most articles, but this has proved to be not enough, for the heavy rains of Virginia.


The garden, in general, is looking a little ragged. I have a huge tree located right above it that drops seed pods and leaves on it constantly. This makes it look messy. Then the rain beats down and throws up dirt and mud onto all of the plants, and turns the newspaper into mush, allowing the stronger weeds to break through the newspapers, as you see above. We spent a good 2.5 hours today cleaning and weeding, and laying down fresh newspaper where needed.

Behold the before and after photos:

BEFORE:
And, AFTER:


BEFORE:

And, AFTER:
Okay, so now if we could control the weeds around the perimeter, that would be great. For some reason, in places we have sprayed before, the plants seem to have developed some type of Round-up resistance. I think that is why, when we sprayed that grass-stuff, it did not die.

I love this garden!