How to kill weeds

Warming weather brings weeds. Here's a helpful tip from an enterprising gardener in the Midwest:

Weeds need oxygen, sunlight, and nutrition to survive. So we have to find a way to deprive them of those essentials without harming the plants and flowers in your beds.

First let's start with some preparation work. The first thing you must do is eliminate any and all weeds that are currently growing in your planting beds. But the secret is to start this process as early as possible, because it really takes at least two weeks to do this effectively.

Basically what you are going to do is disturb all the weeds in your beds by either rototilling, or chopping and digging with a hoe or other garden tool. Just loosen the soil and uproot the weeds. You can dispose of the weeds if they are large, but if they are just small weeds just uproot them and leave them lay in the bed so the sun can dry them out. That will kill them.

Once you have all of the soil disturbed just leave it be for at least three warm, dry days. Then repeat process again. This eliminates any weeds that you might have missed, or any that have sprouted since your last effort. You should do this at least 3 times. Disturb all of the soil, then allow it to dry, then disturb again, then one more time.

Once you are confident that you have eliminated all existing weeds, smooth out the soil and start spreading newspaper over the bed area, then cover the newspaper with mulch.

But . . . . . the newspaper must be at least 7 pages thick! A single sheet of newspaper won't do the trick.

The newspaper will keep any weed seeds in the soil at bay until they expire. Then the newspaper rots right into the soil and you never even know it was there.

A nice thick layer of mulch on top of the newspaper will greatly improve this process. At least 2 inches, maybe 3 inches.

This technique works!

(more personal stuff about Mike and Pam)
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