Okay, I'll say it before all the rest: The only completely chemical-free way to get weeds out of the lawn is to pull them up by hand. Preferably within a day after a wallopin' heavy rainstorm. Or after the lawn has been sufficiently irrigated so as to have the soil wet at least 3" down - if you're going after dandelions, it's best to have soil wet about 5" down. It really is not that big a deal - although how big depends on how many weeds to the square foot of lawn. Start at the farthest point and work your way backwards, so you aren't walking over the area just weeded. If you have reasonably good soil, your weight is not going to compact it much, even though it's wet, and getting up the deep roots is a wonderful aerator. If you can get most of the weeds in the early spring, there won't be too many the rest of the year. Speaking from experience, the first time, the first year (after we bought a previously owned and very neglected house) it took me about 10 hours each day for over 3 days to clear mostly dandelions and wild violets from the front lawn, 100'x125'. They were really healthy d'lions with taproots that went down more than 18". There were literally more d'lions than grass. I threw grass seed over the area after I finished (not the proper way to do it, but by that time, I didn't really care!) which did pretty good at filling in the bare spots. I had to pull weeds for a couple hours every few days April and May because the baby weeds kept coming up, but by June there was a pretty good lawn. The second year I pulled for maybe an hour a week for those months, and since then I pull for an hour or two in early April and again in mid-May. That gets most of the weeds. The violets are far more difficult to eradicate since even a tiny piece of root will make a new plant - I'm still pulling them out of the lawn every spring but at least now I have to look for them hiding in the grass. So it IS possible (just very time-consuming) to get rid of weeds without resorting to poisons. In the years since I have tried several home-remedy-type applications of which boiling water or full-strength (5%) vinegar are more-than-less effective for spot-treatments. I'm experimenting with the use of fine corn-meal as a pre-emergent weed treatment, but I haven't been able to decide just how much it helps - mostly because I'm not sure just when is the most effective time to spread it.

Novice Gardener: You don't have to wait a season to plant. Your kids can plant today if you do the lasagna method. ;O) We've done the layering over grass many times. Just be vigilant for any grass coming through the mulch. We did it last year for several new beds & early spring we expanded and created more planting space right on top of grass. We mound it up 6-18" than the grass & once it decomposes underneath your bed won't be so high. Depends on how large of rootballs you have to plant. We moved our large rhodie last year, so needed a big hole for that & layered around it. So far, so good & the bed is so soft in spots you sink if you step into it to cut flowers or take close up photos. I've continued to add mulch to keep a 2" layer. No huge weed problems even though we used lots of hay. Use what you have for mulch and layers. Try to get a few different sources. -Compost might be best for your vegetable garden concentrating that in your planting holes & use the mulch materials between them to fill it up. -I wouldn't use bark for a vegetable garden though -used coffee grounds from St*rbucks or other shops (call ahead & ask them to save for you to pick up later in the day or the next day if you want a lot of them) -we use partially composted horse manure/bedding because it's free & nearby as the bulk of our layers for ornamental beds. Usually, full of worms & really gets the bed looking nice quickly. -sweepings from a feed store -- a mix of their hay, straw & alfalfa...coarse and you'll have to either shake out the hay seeds or cover up that top layer of hay to reduce sprouting. Del's in Auburn has a separate dumpster. Wear a mask because it's dusty, gloves, & bring your own garden fork to pull it out to put into garbage bags or cans. -use the PEP soil preparation bagged material from Home Depot for about $4 a bag. Mixed with the other mulch materials it will decompose nicely into good soil Just last week at in-laws we gave up trying to remove the thick grass & sod from one bed and removed the plants instead setting them inside cardboard boxes in shade. -mowed the grass as short as possible -covered with overlapping layers of wet cardboard -replaced plants with root balls right on the cardboard to group them together instead of the checkerboard pattern previously planted -added lots of coffee grounds (cleaned out the stash at a local coffee company that keeps it available for customers to come scoop) + soil from other beds in those spots lifting plants up just a bit off the cardboard -filled in the rest with Whidbey's $9 cu yd mulch (shredded wood debris that has dirt mixed in from the piles) + our kitchen compost scraps from the week. Neighbors enjoyed watching & came out to comment several times. One asked, "Where did you get all the plants?" By removing the high grass, you could actually see the plants. We did add a few from home & some from other beds around the property, but not many. Enjoy the easy way to garden!

I don,t post here very often but this has been such a big problem for me I had to chime in. The bigger leafed ones can be killed by cutting down the canes the smaller leafed ones spread under ground. I have been mowing my field for years and the small ones just won,t give up . The bigger ones were killed the first year here. I read a article somewhere a few years ago about the different types of blackberrys and the roots can spread and come up as far away as 80 feet with the right kind of berry. I just don,t remember thier names. But it does seem to be my exp. with the smaller leafed ones.

Re: glyphosate "known to have a half life of at least 2-1/2 years, the use of them has been banned in Denmark because large quantities have been found in their ground water and the USEPA has found glyphosate in the ground water in this country". This is a repetition of completely discredited disinformation that continues to circulate on the web. Glyphosate in temperate soils has a half life of around a month, does not bioaccumulate, and breaks down completely into natural constituents eventually by microbial action. It can only persist for longer periods of time in soils that are frozen. As the CPDR summarizes "In general, glyphosate is moderately persistent in soil. Soil studies have determined glyphosate half-lives ranging from 3 to 130 days (U.S. EPA, 1990; USDA, 1984). The soil field dissipation half-life averaged 44-60 days (Kollman and Segawa, 1995; WSSA, 1989). In the soil environment, glyphosate is resistant to chemical degradation, is stable to sunlight, is relatively nonleachable, and has a low tendency to runoff (except as adsorbed to colloidal matter). It is relatively immobile in most soil environments as a result of its strong adsorption to soil particles." Use of glyphosate has not been banned in Denmark, in fact after examining the science their government stated that they believe that no unacceptable risk of pollution of groundwater is associated with their use of glyphosate. Glyphosate is not a herbicide that has presented groundwater contamination issues unlike atrazine and others. There is much misinformation constantly repeated on the web about glyphosate. For those interested, a decent introduction into the properties of glyphosate is Williams, Kroes, Munro (2000). "Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 31-N2: 117-165.â http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10854122