Newspaper Mulching?

[wowomom]

I have a horrible grass problem in my front garden. I'm not sure what kind of grass is exactly, other than extremely &$#&*$ invasive. It sends out long runners underground (and over ground, and through the house siding, and...) that are nearly impossible to pull out. I tried to keep up with it last year but a husband, a dog, 3 little kids, and

Comments

[labradors]

If you're going to kill off grass like that (we have it in our garden too!) go whole hog and use whole sections... May e 8 sheets plus and make sure there are no gaps or thin areas. Better yet, and easier! Is cardboard. Whenever I do the newspaper thing any small breeze that comes by is super annoying until you wet it down.

[pundigrion]

I also find cardboard even better, but whole sections of newspaper work pretty well when I run out of cardboard. I also put sections of news paper over any gaps the flaps and such leave. I do lasagna gardening, so I cover that with a good foot of leaves and some compost. Mulch is likely to scatter over a large area if anyone at all walk on it in my experience, so you'll want to make sure you put another layer of organic matter on top of the cardboard so it has something to "stick" to.

[carmy_w]

I saw a "This Old House" episode that recommended digging a 6 X 6 inch trench all around the bed and filling it with loose mulch to create a dry zone. The grass won't be as prone to send runners over the dry area. I have no idea if it works, but I though the theory was sound!

[wowomom]

worth a shot! Thanks!

[virginiadear]

I know at least one member of this comm recommends using cardboard: double-corrugated and in as large pieces as possible. As at Wal Mart or Home Depot or Lowe's or other big box store for the cardboard used to protect the large appliances they receive. The fewer seams, the better. On top of the cardboard, that gardener puts layers of newspaper.

The last word I heard, or rather, read, regarding newspaper for preparing lasagna gardening beds or as grass-killing mulch is, it needs to be no fewer than fifteen layers thick, thirty layers is better. More than thirty is wasted effort and wasted resources, apparently.

Returning to the grass-killing, newspaper layers atop the cardboard are then covered with a thick layer of mulch, such as wood mulch.

[wowomom]

Sounds plan-like. :-)

I've been fighting a loosing battle against this stuff for the last 5 years. Now that I've officially achieved stay-at-home-mom status (yay!!!) I'll have time and (and small helpers) to help me layer up cardboard and newspapers. This will be my year to win against the grass. Bwahahahaha!

[smbfrei]

I have successfully used lasagna gardening to switch up front lawn into perennial beds and back lawn into raised beds. But in both cases I set them up in the fall (using my leaf shredder) layering newspaper (wetting it down) leaves and compost. By the spring the grass was dead. If you have less time, black plastic works more quickly, just frying up that grass! Good luck!

[rainarana]

I agree with cardboard as well. See if you can find an auto parts place, as many big box stores won't give their boxes away. HD doesn't as far as I know. We live near an industrial area, including a wholesale auto parts warehouse. They always have massive piles of massive boxes which they told us to take as many as we wanted. Body shops might be a good option as well. I used them to kill our front lawn a couple of years ago when I was putting in the garden.