Cow manure is not a mulch, though it's a wonderful soil amendment. My dad grows in pure composted manure spread on top if his lawn. But if any weed seeds blow in they will love it as much as the veggies. Best cheap/free mulch I've found is newspaper weighed down with burlap. Last year I used hay on top of burlap, the hay tends to blow away and the burlap decomposes within a year, newspaper takes longer and will blow away. Ants tend to build nests under the burlap but the worms love it too, this year I pulled the decomposed burlap off and left the sides of the mounds exposed, put what little hay I had just around the plants (didn't want to hold a lot of moisture in, June was so wet), didn't replace the burlap and the weeds (crabgrass, ragweed, and bindweed) are terrible, I'm going to have a big cleanup job when harvest is done. But for strawberries the best mulch really is straw if you can find it (and I thought $7/bale was high!), in my zone I use leaves and pine boughs to cover for the winter. I got small bales of straw on sale last year after Halloween, also that's the time of year to ask on Freecycle and Craigslist too. Leaves just mold and cause mold/disease on the plants when used in strawberry bed. Pine needles might be good alternative to straw, I just don't have enough clean ones around here with the oaks and maples mixed in with white pine and hemlock.

Why don't you Google soil erosion control? Maybe you can find a quick-fix in some of the suggestions to add to the ones you get here. There are low-growing no-mow grasses that are available for erosion control, too. I am sure such mixes must be available locally for most people. I also thought of a really neat cinderblock use I saw on an internet site a couple of years ago. The cinderblock was buried in a terrace-pattern with the holes up and grass was planted in the holes. It contained the soil and roots so the grass didn't spread and also provided graduated levels for water run-off. I suppose you could think of them as very small raised bed terraces descending from a higher-level raised bed to your paths. Anyway, good luck!

I'm a printer by trade and all most all printing inks are soy based even color inks. I personally think glossy paper is fine to use, it's all the same ink. It's metallic inks and special inks like laser safe or inks for printing on vinyl label stock that I would worry about. But we're not mulching our gardens with anything printed with those inks as long as your using news print. I've done it and it works great for weed control. I usually put straw on top and it keeps it from blowing away. But now it just use the straw and skip the newspaper. You can till it all under when done.

I use 100% compost. Some of it is from chipped and composted tree debris, and the rest is grass clippings. If you don't have enough good quality soil and compost and you would like to add sufficient organic matter to your garden beds to ammend your soil, you can add Growth Products Essential Plus 1-0-1. It is a USDA Bio-Preferred Organic Soil Ammendment and Rooting Biostimulant...excellent stuff. Also, I mix in 8 ounce foil packs of The Landscaper's Companion (fine granuals) which contains Bacillus Subtilus Rhizosphere bacterial spores to help the roots develop and prompt Induced Systemic Resistance in plants. It also contains a yucca wetting agent and humic acid. Throughhout the growing season, I also foliar apply Companion Liquid Biological Fungicide (the only EPA Registered Bio-Fungicide) and Essential plus 1-0-1 as well as applying it to the soil. I've had wonderful results all-around, and I have especially noticed a large reduction in my tomato plant diseases. Here is a link that might be useful: Delta Green Supply