How to avoid weeds in your garden

If you're like me, you look forward to planting and growing a garden every summer, but the thought of keeping the weeds out makes you sick.  Last year I wanted to come up with something to prevent weeds the best I could without using chemicals.  My grandma and I came up with a great idea involving the old carpet from her house.  It definitely took a lot of work, but in the long run was SO worth it.  I spent way too much time the previous year on my hands and knees pulling weeds out every other day.

Putting the carpet down 

We cut the carpet into strips about a foot long, and placed the strips in between the rows that I had already planted.  We put large rocks on top of the carpet strips to weigh them down, but after the first couple of rains we didn't need them because that got the carpet in there good.

Carpet in between my rows of beans

Of course, this is only going to prevent most of the weeds from growing in between the rows.  It does wonders, though, compared to hand-picking all of the weeds out!! The cats also loved the carpet so they could graze in the sun before the plants grew too tall :)

Unless you've done some home renovating recently or know someone who has, you probably dont have any spare carpet just laying around.  Luckily, there are other good solutions.  I'm sure everyone has heard of or tried using newspaper, which is an effective way to do it too.  It is decent at keeping weeds down and retaining moisture in the soil.  In fact, we put newspaper around the tomatoes, but we also put straw on top of the newspaper to hold it down a little better.  One "miracle" trick I've read about is using cardboard.  In hindsight, cardboard would have been easier than the carpet, but we needed something to use the carpet for.  Cardboard would have also been better because from what I've heard, you just leave it in the garden and by the time you are getting your garden ready the next year, it will be all disintegrated into the soil, which in turn adds more organic material to the soil.

From my personal experience the carpet worked great!  But next year, when I dont have old carpet on hand, I will definitely be trying the cardboard.  I have only heard great things!