[Community_garden] path construction

[yarrow at sfo.com]

At 12:21 PM -0700 3/28/08, Linda Casto wrote:
>We use a heavy layer of newspaper under wood chips on our secondary 
>paths.  I like the idea of cardboard better though so I'm going to 
>have our "I can find anything you need" person get busy looking for 
>it.
>

I've tried both at my community garden under wood-chip-mulched paths. 
The worms seem to like cardboard better, since nothing is left after 
a year except tape and labels. In my experience, 3-5 layers of 
newspaper, generously overlapped, is enough to decrease weeds 
significantly. Newspaper takes a little more work, because it needs 
to be sprinkled so it doesn't blow away before it's covered with 
mulch. But it's easier to store and haul sufficient newspaper to the 
garden. Cardboard is easy to find, but bulky. It takes a wheelbarrow 
or two to haul the amount I need, and I don't have a place to store 
it, so I have to source the cardboard the same day I mulch the paths.

When I've replaced either cardboard or newspaper about once a year, 
I've had almost no bermuda grass, bindweed, or raspberry to pull out, 
even though neighboring garden beds still grow all three in 
abundance, and they're rampant on most other garden paths. (I reuse 
the aged path mulch on my garden beds, and put fresh free mulch on 
the paths.) If I wait more than a year (as I have this spring), I 
find I'm pulling a handful of weeds every time I go to the garden in 
the spring, and more as the season progresses. I like to pull weeds, 
but I don't like to pull the same weeds every week!

In my experience, if weeds are a problem, it's a waste of time to 
mulch without cardboard or newspaper underneath. One year I didn't 
put newspaper or cardboard under the path between my garden and the 
hose bib (since it wasn't next to my garden), but I did mulch it. I 
was pulling weeds all summer.

I usually pull all the weeds I can find before I put down the 
cardboard or newspaper, but I've noticed other people who've started 
using this method don't. They have a few more weeds, but far less 
than if they didn't use the cardboard/newspaper and mulch.

Tanya in California
where I've already planted 7 tomato plants and have a bunch more 
"wintersown" tomato seedlings outside