How to Get Rid of Weeds: The Fast and Easy Way!

How to get rid of weeds- the fast and easy way!

Ya’ll. I may have stumbled across something that changes the way I garden forever! Let me tell you a little story… I was pretty distraught this weekend. My garden, due to my negligence, was completely full of weeds and grass. So much so that I thought I might just have to abandon it and see if anything grows in between the weeds and grass. Before I gave up all hope, I got to Googling and once again, the Internet came to my rescue. I found this post from A Garden for the House and it saved my garden. The post describes how to smother weeds with newspaper. GENIUS!

We followed the steps of the author almost exactly. And it was so easy. Simply, cover all of your weeds and exposed soil with newspaper. Leave the plants exposed. Cover the newspaper in mulch. DONE!  The newspaper will smother the weeds and prohibit new weeds from growing. Here are some other helpful hints we learned along the way.

  1. Make sure you have enough newspaper! Newspaper works best because it will break down easier than glossy pages. We ran out of newspaper and you can see we had to use a bit of the glossy newspaper ad inserts towards the end. Oh well. I wanted to get it done in one day!
  2. This works best on a day with no wind. If it is even the least bit windy, the papers will blow around.
  3. Make sure you water the soil before, during and after the process. This will help the newspaper stick to the soil.
  4. This is easiest as a two person job. During this process I laid down the newspaper and George misted the paper behind me. Yes, I got wet. But I didn’t mind if it meant never weeding again.
  5. This process would have been FREE if I had saved enough leaves to cover the newspaper. Unfortunately I did not and I had to purchase about $50 worth of mulch. Again, it was worth it to never weed again!
The Garden After Mulching

The Garden After Mulching. We could have bought just a bit more mulch to fully cover the newspaper.

Have you ever heard of this magical trick? How’s your garden growing? Talk to me in the comments!

love,
melanie