first question…….what type of fertilizer do you use?????? i used to use some form of animal dung. i found that for some reason holds alot of weed seeds, especially if its older. i,ve switched to useing 10-10-10 and leaves from my big maple tree. i also trow in my used coffee grounds, nitrogen, and all potatoe peelings etc gets tossed in the garden………. year round.
after its tilled in the spring and the garden is somewhat established i use one of them garden weasel thingy’s. you also need to pull the weed getting all the roots. once i’ve gone threw the garden thoroughly, i lay grass clippings around the cukes, maters, peppers and cabbage. i leave bare dirt around kalarabi carrots etc.
your never going to get rid of weeds but i have found staying away from animal manure is a good start.
This year I expanded our garden by quite a bit and tilled up some of the yard and an overgrown grass/weed area. For that part I sprayed it with round up last fall, tilled it. Tilled it this spring, then applied 10-10-10 and tilled it again. I’ll be fighting weeds and grass in this part for several years, but the newspaper/mulch has done its job so far and everything looks nice right now.
For the remainder of the garden, we compost a lot of our household waste, yard waste, and chicken poop (14 laying hens). I don’t get enough from it to just cover the entire garden, so after I determine where my garden rows are, I will work that into the ground in the row before planting.
