Ashes can be quite alkaline at least for a short time until it leaches away. If your pH is already high I would not put ashes into the soil. If your soil is acidic it probably won't hurt. Typically it's not a good idea to till uncomposted stuff directly into the soil in spring because breakdown can temporarily deplete nitrogen. Grass clippings are high in nitrogen though so it might be OK. I have not tried this so I'm guessing. I normally use grass clippings mixed with last year's leaves as a summer mulch for the garden. By fall it has broken down and disappeared. You should really use a mulching mower and recycle those clippings back into the lawn, or mix them with some browns (leaves, straw, sawdust, wood chips, newspaper shreds) and compost them. Your soil will thank you. :-]

Newspaper is fine either shredded or used in multiple sheets overlapped in the lay out. Some pre-soak 4-5 sheets at a time, lay them out and then overlap them with the next 4-5 sheets. It's easier to get them wet before laying them down than after. Wood chip mulches don't generally belong in vegetable gardens as they can cause nitrogen binding issues. You'll find many discussions about this problem over on the Soil & Mulch forum. If you choose to use the cypress then as Bill suggested, it really needs to be raked aside and removed at seasons end, NOT tilled in. There are many really great veggie garden mulches available that not only keep down weeds but also improve the soil at the same time and any one of them is far better than any wood chip mulch - straw, hay, compost, leaf mold, chopped fall leaves, grass clippings, etc. Consider using your newspaper topped with one of them instead and save the cedar mulch for its purpose - decorative mulching in a flower bed. Dave

Thank you, Ideefixe and Lindac, I really appreciate it! I feel like I should have a cartoon thought-bubble above my head that says "Duh!" -- yes I will definitely scan the clippings. We have a copier/scanner/fax and I've never scanned anything, so it hadn't occurred to me. Duh indeed! I'll also get some acid-reduction spray; I never knew there was such a thing. I'll also look into the milk of magnesia recipe - who'da thunk? Thanks again!

I guess I wonder: Have you pulled them out and looked at them in the past 5 or 10 years, and extrapolating that into the future, how often will you pull them out and peruse them in the next 5 or 10 years? I love historical newspapers--I work at a newspaper, so I'm very glad that some people believe "important" covers and important journalism have value. But knowing that they will deteriorate and that there is pretty much nothing you can do to keep them pristine, I like the idea a fellow newspaperman did with a few fronts that he especially valued: He framed them and put them up in his finished basement. (He used special, large mounting corners so that if someone wanted to look at inside pages, he could open the frame and take the paper out.) History all around him--not sitting in a box waiting for the moment somebody remembers the newspapers are there. The OP might not have the desire or wall space to do this, but it's an option for some people, perhaps.