Beginner Gardening: Mulching for low maintenance, 2 by hcmcdole

hcmcdole wrote:
I don\'t use newspaper but I have heard of it in veggie beds. If you do put it down and then spread a light layer of organic mulch on top it would last a year or more. If you want to apply more paper the following year, you could rake back the organic material (what is left of it) and put the new paper down and re-use the organic material and add new material if needed.

I quit using pine bark mulch as it doesn\'t lock in place and a good hard rain will move it whichever way the water is moving. I have had better luck with cypress mulch as the pieces are of various sizes and lock into place a lot better.

Weeds will still come up in mulch but easier to pull out if the roots don\'t hit the soil below the paper.

I used landscape fabric nearly 14 years ago to kill part of our Bermuda lawn as it is tough to dig or Rototill. The fabric did the trick by blocking the sun and a pine straw mulch hid the fabric. I am in the process of removing the fabric this year. Good for some things and bad for other applications. I would never use it for an annual bed or even perennials but for shrubs and trees it worked out fairly well.

The azaleas did okay with landscape fabric for example.