Protecting your garden from weeds: cardboard barriers and mulching your garden beds

Recommendation points

• Let’s start with a thin layer of newspapers
• Time for cardboard
• Humidification of cardboard
• Mulching
• Add soil

You can find a thousand ways to get rid of weeds in your area, but their effectiveness often does not always meet expectations. We offer you one way that has already blown up the Internet and transformed many gardens, ridding them of annoying weeds – “cardboard gardening”.

If you have not heard of “cardboard gardening”, then you are not alone, this method is only gaining popularity. The classic version with uprooting weeds gives little result, because the remaining pieces of the root system of pest plants are enough to re-fill the beds. Essentially, the new method is to create a barrier, a shield, against the spread of weeds to the topsoil. So the activity of weeds is drowned out for the sake of cultivated plants.

This method is also perfect if you do not want to bother too much about cleaning a garden area that has long been overgrown with weeds in order to plant a front garden with flowers on it this year..

Let’s take a closer look at this method..

Let’s start with a thin layer of newspapers

It’s time to delve into the old rubble of waste paper in your garage or attic. We need newspapers and magazines printed on plain, non-glossy or waxed paper. After you have cleared the area of ​​large debris and objects throughout its area, a thin layer of newspaper spreads is lined.

The waste paper should be laid out in layers so that approximately 100 sheets fall on each square meter. Make sure the paper is evenly distributed over the entire area without lumps, where the layer is too thick or thin.

Time for cardboard

Each piece of cardboard should be single ply. When disassembling old boxes, you should cut or tear them open so that they fully unfold. To collect the required amount of cardboard, it is enough to go around the nearest stores or walk around the neighbors and collect all the boxes. In this case, size does not play a significant role..

Spread the cardboard tightly so that there are no gaps for weeds to crawl through. You may have to cut the disassembled boxes into smaller pieces.

Humidification of cardboard

The whole point is to use cardboard to help your garden grow more actively and well than ever. To achieve this, the cardboard should be moistened with plenty of water. To do this, use a regular spray, as for watering the garden beds. The cardboard should be completely wet, after which it will lie even more densely on the soil surface and will definitely not budge.

Mulching

This is to create an extra layer of nutrients for your garden. A layer of mulch or humus from your compost heap is poured over the cardboard. It is advisable to select or procure material with a fine fraction. In the “cardboard garden”, feeding and mulching is enough to do just once a season or even less often, because nutrients will stay on the soil surface longer without washing out.

Add soil

The whole point of mulching your beds using the “cardboard garden” method is to renew the top fertile soil layer, which will no longer be annoying weeds. Therefore, after mulching and feeding, a layer of clean and prepared soil should be distributed over the site..

You should not take the land from your own backyard, because there are enough remnants of roots and other living creatures in it. A prepared substrate from a store is better suited. The thickness of the layer will vary depending on what exactly will be grown in the area. There must be enough depth to make a hole and plant the selected plants.

In order not to deprive yourself of the opportunity to plant plants with a deep root system, it is enough to build a decorative wooden formwork around the prepared area of ​​the “cardboard garden”, which will increase the thickness of the fertile soil layer.