You could just pull the weeds that do emerge before they lay seed down onto the mulch layer, and next year remulch.

I'll be interested in Bill's response but until he posts, I will comment on the cardboard under mulch approach (since I sort of live 'next door' in CT). I've laid down corrugated cardboard under thick layer of bark mulch in all my garden beds. It doesn't eliminate weeds or the pulling thereof--it simply minimizes the number that need pulling.

I started by using 30 thicknesses of newspaper nearly 10 years ago but that breaks down too quickly. The cardboard eventually breaks down as well but lasts quite a bit longer than the newspaper and is easier to work around if you decide to add a plant you didn't originally intend to set in your garden bed. Cardboard's added benefit/attraction: worms love cardboard. Healthy worms = worm poop which = healthy soil.

Landscape fabric is an abomination visited upon unsuspecting gardeners who don't also use chemicals/poisons to prevent weeds. It doesn't work. While corrugated cardboard has proven itself the most effective deterrent in my garden, certain aggressive weeds (i.e., creeping Charlie comes to mind) just grow over the top of the bark mulch, cardboard notwithstanding.

A couple of my garden beds under construction, mulched over corrugated cardboard in 2010:
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One last tip--plain old vinegar will kill anything and is completely organic/water soluble. I pour it on poison ivy every year.

Good luck to you patty_cakes.

I'm with gardenweed - landscape fabric is an abomination. Once the weeds that start growing through it become established, it's almost impossible to remove them without pulling the fabric up through the mulch. Eventually you'll need to remove it, unless you're really in a desert area where nothing grows anyway.

In my experience, bark mulch is more useful than gravel, at least in areas where there are deciduous trees. I've had gravel, and unless you like using a leaf blower on a very regular basis, the gravel will become mixed with leaf mold, and then it stops being a mulch and starts being gravelly soil.Plus, bark mulch enriches the soil as it decomposes, and encourages earth worms, as gardenweed said.

Good luck with your weeds - right now as I look out my window, I can't see a single weed in my garden. That's the up side of having a foot of snow on the ground, I guess.

OK.....since I mentioned that I put a material under my mulches it seems I've offended some people, so I'll explain, but then that's all I'm going to say about it. Nobody cares about our world any more than I do, believe me! I spent a considerable amount of extra money to ensure that the materials were natural. I could have spent less than half for synthetic junk, but I didn't. We all make our choices based on what we like. I saw this forum as a nice friendly place and I'd like to keep it like that.

OK moving on.....since you asked so nicely for help, and since I'm a nice guy, here goes. So, first of all........I don't have gravel anywhere. In the front of the house, where there is blinding sun all day, I decided to plant a xeric (dry environment) garden. It has cacti, yuccas, hesperaloe, lavender, delosperma, sempervivum, sedum, tritoma, coreopsis and other plants that like heat and sun. For this garden area only, I put down a woven fiber fabric that is a natural cloth-like material, sort of like felt. On top of this is 4-6 inches of stone of about 1.25 inches. This keeps the soil moist, retains heat at night and in winter to some degree (no pun!) and most importantly, keeps the plants "high and dry" in winter. Cold doesn't harm these types of plants, but wet with the cold would damage or kill them.

In the larger, upper garden, where the paved walkways are, there is a similar material, and although it's a natural fiber, it's very tightly woven, and supposedly will last 20 years. On top of it is 6 inches of bark mulch. Nothing has grown through it in 3 seasons. I do walk around once a week and pluck the tiny weeds I see, but by keeping after them, I think, there are none that reach seeding stage, and so the chore is minimal.

So that's it. I hope you can get your garden (or more correctly, the weeds!) under control. Good luck!

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Thanks everyone!! I appreciate all the help and info I can get!!!

Persimmons, the weeds aren't in the mulch layer, they're *under* it, or underneath the landscape fabric, even worse. I weed every week, but it's a type of weed that isn't just a single root, it's a runner of some type, and not as easy to pull as most ordinary weeds.

gardenweed and diggingthedirt, I wish someone would have told me about the landscape fabric! I thought it was the perfect solution for keeping weeds
out, and they would be few and far between since sunlight wasn't directly getting to the seedlings. For what I spent on fabric and labor, I could have had a few more plants. Years ago I used black plastic, and hardly had a weed!! I just may resort to that.

Bill, I had to go back and look at your pics re:your not using gravel. I guess when I saw the larger rock in the one area, I thought the picture was blown up so the stones were enlarged leaving me to think it was gravel~I did notice the mulch though. It's the look i'm wanting, almost pristine, weedless, manicured, neat, and just plain beautiful! The weeds *are* under control, but it's because of my being on top of the problem! I'm 71 years old, and although fit, would like to be cutting or planting flowers, not pulling weeds! When I had the mulch put down, it was a good 8 inches, and there's still a good 5-6, more or less in some areas. The depth of mulch doesn't seem to affect the weeds since they are underneath the fabric(of which I wasn't given a choice of good/better/best)and if they can push thru that, the mulch is a piece of cake. Someone mentioned vinegar, and since I have a flagstone pathway w/soil between the crevices, may resort to a good spraying of it to see what happens, or have the stones cemented permanently. I'll be re-doing 'something'(newspaper OR black plastic!!)as weather permits, and hopefully by spring the majority of weed seedlings will be dead. And thanks for being a 'nice guy' and gentleman for answering. ;o)

Bill, is the tightly woven fabric easy to plant through? Do you have to actually cut it? Also, when you're pulling the tiny weeds, do you think they're rooted beneath or above the fabric? There are some areas where I think a fabric can be very effective (under a thick layer of anything) and would be interested in this natural fabric.

I tried the black landscape fabric in the front where we put in pea stone, and ripped it out within a few years when we decided to switch to pavers. Edges were always sticking out and in general it looked messy and weeds came through anyway, or rooted from above.

I find chopped oak leaves work very well. We don't even put down a very thick layer. There must be something in the leaves that prohibits germination of some seeds......perhaps?

I'm not 71 yet, but not too far behind! Glad you can get out there but I understand how you'd like to have more time to plant and enjoy rather than pulling that nasty-sounding weed! Maybe the vinegar will work, but since your garden may smell like a salad anyway, perhaps you should plant some lettuce and save a step............. :-)

Thyme2dig,
In the cactus garden, I don't plant annuals, nor in the upper bark mulched garden. When I do want to plant a shrub or tree, or perennial, then I do have to cut the fabric. I make an "X" and fold it back, then once the plant is in place, I "guesstimate" the diameter the trunk is, and, depending on the species, growth rate and so forth, I trim the points off the flaps (or tuck them under if not too big) to create a suitable opening so that the fabric doesn't bunch. Then I fold the flaps down and cover with mulch again, and voila! But I don't add plants too often, since I enjoy waiting to find special things for certain spots. Also, the existing plants grow in and the dynamic of the garden changes. Where I thought I might have needed a plant a couple of years ago now seems full enough to let the existing plants develop, or maybe I could use a smaller plant in the space than I originally thought. A work in progress, and a joy.

The weeds I pull are seedlings, a couple of inches tall and these are just growing in the mulch, not below the fabric. A 20 minute walk around the garden once a week keeps things pretty much in check.

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The fact that I don't *feel* 71 helps!! lol Maybe I'll plant the lettuce inbetween the flagstone pathway stones.

Bill, your 20 minutes is 40 for me, and it is weekly. I travel a lot, sometimes as long as 3 weeks, and when I get home, it could be a 2 hour job or longer. That's probably my biggest reason for wanting something that wil eradicate the problem completely, or almost. With Austin's heat, it becomes a task I do in the evening, and with the wind we have, am fortunate not to have Mosquitos. I guess I should look at it as a form of exercise. ;o)

Patty,

Being away for so long could add to the problem. And I'd guess that things grow faster in the TX heat. Have you considered perennial ground cover plants? They would spread over the mulch too. There are a lot of choices in your climate for plants that spread and stay low, and choke out a lot of weeds. And they add so much interest in form, leaf shape, color, texture etc. There are evergreen types, such as carpet junipers, succulent types like sedum, sempervivums and delosperma ("Ice plants" - just the name should cool you off!) that are covered with flowers all summer, even certain ivies and much more. Your local nurseries would have a lot of suggestions for sun and shade I'm sure.

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Just a note I thought I'd share here, because I was quite truly upset when I heard this. I discovered about two weeks ago that white vinegar is made from corn. Maybe this is common knowledge to most folks, but I was unaware.

That of course means that it's 99.9% likely that it's made with GMO corn, so it's not as organic as we think it is. I'm kind of horrified to think that I've been dumping GMOs all over my yard this year in my big poison ivy eradication campaign (not to mention cleaning my house and washing my hair with it!).

So now I'm in search of a reasonably priced, organic white vinegar. Just thought I'd share this in case others are concerned with GMOs as well.

Thanks,
Dee

Thanks Dee, I didn't know it was made from corn either. Definitely do not want to buy any product that has GMO in it and keep those people in business who are growing it.

But you can buy apple cider vinegar made with organic apples, which is what I would use.

Hi Patty Cakes. Yes, that is probably what I will have to do. It's just the difference between paying $1.49 for a 2-gallon jug of white vinegar or $9 for a 12 ounce bottle of organic apple cider vinegar! So the search for the white vinegar (or, by the same token, a cheaper apple cider vinegar!) continues!

By the way, gardenweed, your photos didn't load for me when I first viewed this thread, but they did just now. Your pathway is lovely - and looks so lush now that we are in the depths of this cold winter!

:)
Dee

The angst over weeds affects us all, no matter our gardening style. As Patty_Cakes said, time and (in my case) age affects our weeding technique.

I have used fabric cloth and found it unsuccessful for the reasons others have mentioned. I've successfully used Bill's technique of a raised bed with dry stone mulch for certain plants like Lithodora, which I killed regularly in the past. I've used ground covers as a go-between to eliminate weeding between specimen plants. We also are able to get free, year-round compost from the town and pile this on every spring and then over the summer. This has cut down on the cost for mulch.

It's a never-ending battle, for sure!

Molie

Dee,

You need not be concerned about vinegar made from GMO corn. Corn is a very complex plant containing a genetic code that produces lots of different proteins, and organic compounds. Vinegar is a dilute solution of acetic acid in water. Acetic acid is a very simple organic compound containing two carbon atoms, two oxygen atoms, and four hydrogen atoms. Acetic acid derived from GMO corn is no different that acetic acid derived from regular corn or anything else for that matter. Organic white vinegar is a scam. It is identical to white vinegar from any other source.