Welcome to the club! I suppose nearly all of us have been there at one time or another. In my experience, I have learned to follow two caveats: Never let a weed flower (thus go to seed) and MULCH. This will work just as well as, if not better, than the weed barrier cloth, will not tear and then have to be pulled (arduously) out of the bed sometime down the road, and will eventually feed your soil.

First, mulch. If I were you, the same day I filled my beds, I would put down ten sheet thicknesses of newspaper over the entire bed, and then top it off with mulch: leaves or grass clippings (not the kind with seedheads!), or pinestraw, or whatever you have. Leave it there for the entire season, just opening up holes for planting.

You're taking a walking tour of your garden everyday anyway, right? Well, whenever you see a stray weed that has somehow come up through the mulch, bend over and pull it out.

In your "off season", if you have one, mulch the beds! This will prevent windblown or bird sown seeds from making contact with the soil.

Everytime you plant a new crop, mulch the bed at the same time you plant. This is not only the best way to keep weeds at bay, it also holds moisture in the soil and eventually breaks down into good organic material that improves the soil.

If you can, try to avoid excessive tilling. It's hard to do in raised beds anyway. Once your soil is nice and soft and crumbly, all you really need to do is cultivate the top 3 or 4 inches with a hoe or hand cultivator and plant. By avoiding tilling, you will stop bringing weed seeds up to the surface where they get sunshine and sprout!

If you can prevent any weed from going to seed in your beds for three years, you will have the situation under control, assuming you continue to mulch. I read this in a book when I first started gardening. I have lived by it for more than 25 years and I am telling you that it's true.

Now, your soil shrinkage is another issue. It is a fact of life with raised beds. Each year you wil need to replenish the soil that has been lost. Start a compost pile. Learn how to do it by reading up. To be safe, NEVER put anything in it that has weed seed heads or bulbous looking roots. Although a hot pile is supposed to kill all the seeds in it, I am one who doesn't take chances. Anything that is weedy and even looks like it was about to make seeds goes into the garbage can at my house.

You can get control of this. Honestly you can. But it will take a firm commitment on your part. At first, it will seem like an awful lot of trouble to cover all that beautiful soil up with mulch the same day you plant. But, believe me, in the end, it's a huge time saver and improves the look and performance of your garden a thousandfold.

Weeds blow into the garden, from other areas, which create weeds in the garden. There's no way to avoid this, but you can help control it.

Do you use the entire 4' x 24' bed? If you're also container gardening, maybe you don't need the entire space? Start with half the garden (maybe leave the ends covered with tarps for now, with hay on top) and just concentrate on the middle. Pull out all the weeds, add your compost (an excellent idea) and wait a few weeks and pull out the weeds again. Then, plant.

I'd start with plants, not seeds...until you get control of the weeds. Transplant your veggies out there and then add alyssum between the plants, to shade the ground. This will look nice and keep the weeds down. Think about marigolds around the tomatoes or along the edges of the bed. Go out and check the garden every evening, to see if you need to pull a few weeds or water. After a few weeks, you should have the upper hand.

Then, if you feel good about the garden...take off the tarps on the ends (if you think you'll use them, add the compost when you do the middle bed) and pull any weeds. Do what you did with the middle bed. As you become more confident...try some seeds. Maybe some beans (they're easy to see and weed around) or a row of peas, maybe some lettuce/spinach.

Don't try to do too much. This year, you need to rediscover your joy of gardening (why you put the bed there, in the first place) and show DH you can do this. Not only maintain it, but make it beautiful. The more flowers you add...the prettier it will be and the more it will shade out the weeds. Maybe look for a few obelisks to put in for climbing beans or mini-pumpkins. Add some nasturtiums around the squash. Have some fun! :)

Sounds like you're set up for some really great gardening...but it takes a lot of work. You just can't plant the seeds or plants and forget about them. If you're holding down a full-time job, it might be a bit much for you at this time. My day starts at sunrise when I pick the slugs off the plants and drop them in soapy water. I make a game of it by counting them every day and keep a running total until slug season is over in 6-8 weeks. I give my grandson a penny for every slug that I picked. You need to go after the weeds on a daily basis also. When your veggies get some height on them, then you can mulch around them. I use straw, leaves, even old cotton t-shirts and undershirts which will compost by the end of the season. I dump my grass clippings out on a tarp in full sun and scatter it around a little. It'll dry in a couple of hours. Then you can use it as mulch. You'll need to keep several inches of mulch on the bed to keep the weeds down. Any weed that does poke it's head through the mulch will pull out easily. I use to put down several layers of newspaper as a weed barrier, but I don't get the paper anymore. No doubt other gardeners will weigh in with other suggestions for you. Best wishes for a glorious gardening adventure.

You will always have weeds to contend with. The key is to find a way to manage them with the least amount of effort, so they never get ahead of you. This means weekly attention, but not hours and hours. It starts with designing a garden that suits your ability.

The first approach is to use MULCH. Any soil that is not supporting a plant you intended to grow there should be covered with something that will block sunlight. This can be something natural, like bark or straw, something synthetic, like paper or cardboard or weed barrier fabric, or a combination.

The second approach is MECHANICAL control. This can mean hand weeding, hoeing or cultivating, or burning.

The third approach is HERBICIDE. I don't use or promote that approach, but it's your choice, and many people here use it to good effect.

The first thing to do is to get your soil back in the bed and let it settle. If you can, water it well and cover it with clear plastic. This will encourage the weed seeds in the soil to germinate. Once you see the slightest bit of green popping up, remove the plastic and hoe the entire garden. To do this, sharpen the hoe, and just run the edge below the surface of the soil. Essentially you want to shave the top 1/8" of soil, cutting the stems of the weeds from the roots. Water again and cover it up again with the plastic when you're done.

Do this every week, until you're ready to start planting. Every time you do this, you will substantially reduce the number of weeds waiting to sprout. By not digging too deeply with the hoe, many of the seeds in the soil will not successfully germinate, because they are too deep, or not exposed to light.

When you are ready to plant, you will continue to do this, but you will be working around the plants and seeds that hou have planted. Gardeners plant in rows because it is easier to hoe in straight lines. If your plants are properly spaced, it will be easy to run a hoe between the plants, so when you design your garden, do it with an awareness of how big your tools are, so they can fit between the plants, and you can quickly dispatch the unwanted growth. Once weeds reach a certain size, they are harder to keep under control, but if you do this at least once a week, it will be neither arduous nor time-consuming.

The right tool makes a difference. To do this kind of work properly, you want a small-bladed hoe, and the blade should be 45 to 60 degrees angle to the handle (unless you splurge on a collinear hoe). A scuffle or stirrup hoe, Dutch hoe, swan's-neck hoe, diamond hoe will all work, and a long handle is usually better than shorter - longer than 60" if you can find one, which will mean less bending.

Once you have your seeds sprouted and your transplants in, if hoeing isn't an enjoyable past-time, then you should mulch heavily. Hoeing will eventually eliminate weeds, mulching will prevent them from germinating (a few will still pop up, but not more than can be managed by hand).
Either way, the key is diligence. I don't know a single gardener who doesn't love the look of a cleanly cultivated garden, and you will soon be able to do a plot this size in much less than an hour a week.

Just spend 5 minutes a day weeding anything popping up. That's what I do. I spent about 16 hours last summer weeding an area that was full of grass and bindweed. It still has grass and bindweed, but I just have to keep weeding it.

It is an area with very airy soil since I pitchforked down at least 1 foot. I would spend 10-20 minutes on one small spot of the area with the pitchfork until I could easily stick the pitchfork in the soil without using much pressure.

Salem girl- Since you have one long, raised bed...have you looked at the potager forum, for ideas? You can look under 'The Kitchen Garden' or scroll down until you see 'potager' in the 'garden by title' list.

Here's a link to a beautiful potager...by Laura, one of the GW members. It's under Lulabelle's view. Hope it gives you some great ideas :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Lulabelle's view link

First off thanks for everyone's input. My love for the garden is all about the instant access to fresh pulled vegetables and herbs and knowing where they came from. I'm a cook first and foremost. Gardening is a means to an end although I do enjoy the planning, planting and picking. I'm not averse to hard work, but it had taken over and a trip to the farmer's market just looked better and better. I have 4 yards getting delivered while I'm at work tomorrow. They'll replace the tarps for me all for the $45. I'm pretty happy about that.

Here's my plan based on a mix of the advice I heard. Replace the tarps with cleap plastic to bake away and let and seeds that would germinate do so. Peel back every weekend and hoe to remove weed heads from roots. In 4 weeks, lay down 10 layers of newspaper along with grass clippings or hay. Plant plants only the first year (or transplants) Consider alyssum or marigolds in between veggies. It would also help to start a compost pile of my own this year...pick weeds as I see 'em.

I didn't put the pick weeds last as an afterthought. (Really!!) I'm actually amazed at the concept of "pick weeds as I see 'em" My weed picking had consisted of hours and hours at a time, seeing them in my sleep and it never seemed done even after I was just finished. I would be thrilled to weed for 5 minutes a day.

Let me know if you have any more input or if I missed anything. Thanks!

Don't give up on gardening - if you do, that means the weeds beat you and they do not deserve that victory. It also means we lost another gardener. In a way it is a mindset, an obsession that has to be created within you. Who is going to win - you or the weeds? Get obsessed about a weed-free garden. Get angry at them if that is what it takes. Declare war on them and develop a satisfaction in destroying them. Get to the point where seeing one weed sprouting in your garden is unacceptable. Then you have won - for that season. The battle starts anew at the beginning of every growing season.

Seriously, it is all about maintenance as mentioned previously. We all know that weeds are a fact of life in gardening, but sad to say many new gardeners simply do not realize what this entails and it crushes their dreams. Unfortunately I have seen this happen many times. Check the garden daily and get the weeds out when they are small - easier to pull and no seeds so they can be composted. By composting them they will actually be benefiting you in a small way. Also, it is absolutely critical to never, ever, allow weeds to go to seed. The seeds from one plant can set you back years.

It really is about mindset. Don't look at garden maintenance as a chore, look at it as some quiet time for yourself to be alone with your thoughts and to unwind from your daily stresses. It is also a way to "tune in" to your garden, to observe, inspect, and get a general feeling of how your plants are doing and what is coming up for harvest. If the weeds are starting to get bad and you don't have time then make time - set a goal of weeding for fifteen minutes a day, stick to it, and be happy for what you accomplished in those fifteen minutes. You will see progress and that will make you feel better. Before you know it, the garden will be completely weeded.

There is nothing more disheartening and demoralizing than a garden that has gotten out of control. This is the destroyer of dreams. One simply cannot ever allow that to happen.

Follow the advice of the previous posts, and also get back that sense of pride and feeling of accomplishment you had during your first harvest. I wish the best for your gardening adventure, part two!

-Tom

I do have to disagree with Lavendar about the nasturtiums in the vege garden! I consider them weeds! They will take over the world if allowed!
I do, however have them along a fence line so they don't reseed in the veges.I also have them throughout the herb garden where it is easy to pull them if I need to. Same with morning glories. Keep em around, but OUT of the vege garden! JMHO Nancy

Some great advice here. I will be trying some of these strategies!

Salem Girl, I dream about my weeds and my rocks. I fenced off an area that was too large (because everyone I knew told me they outgrew their fence so make it big!)--50 by 60 feet and the year it was built I had a 1 year old baby. Needless to say the weeds defeated me that year. Last year I got a bit more than half of it under control by using cardboard and cover crops in the areas I couldn't focus on/wasn't ready to plant. I used straw mulch in all the areas I ws growing veggies. This year I am working on improving my soil and removing more and more rocks. It's crazy stuff and can really defeat you if you let it. But as the folks say here, it does get better. I do see an improvement. And there are so many great tips in these responses. You can do it!!

By the way does anyone know if it's safe to use brown cardboard boxes in the vegetable garden? I try to be as organic as possible and I was wondering about the glues. I only use cardboard boxes that are brown and made in the US.

Hi Salem,
It seems you actually have two issues to conquer. One is the weeds (to make yourself happy with the garden), the other is to keep your spouse happy with the garden. These, although related aren't always quite the same thing in my experience. Keeping the spouse happy is often a question of their sense of aesthetics, beyond the basic weed issue.

There has been a LOT of good advice posted above, so I'll try not to repeat that which has already been said, but I'd like to add a few ideas that may help.

1) I agree with the "use plants this year, not seeds" for the most part. There are a few exceptions; things that germinate really easily and (I think) easier to set out nicely by seed than by transplant (and some don't like transplanting). These are things like beans, peas, carrots, and radishes. A few that you might want to start in paper cups to transplant yourself might be cucumbers, squash, lettuce, and basil. These could be started straight in the garden, but for now paper cups would make the mulching part easier.

2) Mulch is great, and breaks down nicely to compost, but weeds can and do get around it. Since you have to make your spouse happy (especially this critical year), I might instead use weed barrier fabric on TOP of the bed. Use the kind that lets water trickle through the tiny holes. Get your soil added and mixed, cover with the barrier, pin it down, then cut little holes where the plants will go. DO NOT mulch on top of the barrier. You won't get the added organic material this year since you aren't mulching, but your spouse will be happy and you will be more likely to have a positive experience (which is critical when starting out), while keeping the system simple. After you get then hang of things for a year or two, then try going with mulch and no weed barrier. I don't think the weed barrier would make the soil too hot since you are in zone 5. Don't know if you are in Salem, MA, but I grew up in the Boston area and we used to use black plastic when I was a kid.

3) Don't plant too much. You'll have to stake things up consistently to keep it looking nice and make your spouse happy. Make it easy on yourself. You can always run to your farmers market if you don't have enough. The point is to try different things and have FUN doing it. If that means only four tomato plants, one bean pole, six cucumbers, three zucchini, and one little row each of lettuce, carrots, and radishes, then that's just fine. If it is easier to keep tidy, then your spouse will be more likely to be satisfied. Then next year you can add more if you feel like it. Don't feel like you have to pack them all in tightly together, either (like one does for square foot gardening). The weed barrier will show in between, but that's OK. It will give you more room to work around each plant. The concept here is to make it as easy as possible this year.

4) If finding time to water can be tricky (and water can be necessary to keep the beds looking good and the spouse happy), you might want to put in soaker hoses running under the weed barrier, right along where your plants will be. You can hook them up in a long chain, turn on the faucet, then do other chores (like staking and other maintenance) while the garden is being watered.

5) To keep the beds nice and your spouse happy, be sure to remove leaves that die during the season. For example, the lower leaves of tomatoes die as the season goes on. Just pluck those off, leaving the stem bare. Same goes for squash, cucumbers, etc. Many people do this anyway to control diseases, but it will also make the beds look nice and tidy.

6) If you only use organic material in your garden beds, you will always have to replenish it. I actually prefer to have a mix of topsoil and organics. It gets hot here in the summer, and if I have too much organic material, it dries out and is hard to re-wet. The clay particles in the topsoil help keep the water from running right through. Not sure if this is an issue where you are, though. The other thing I like about mixing in some topsoil is that the beds won't shrink as much.

Good luck!

First, I am in zone 5ish (NH) and have never had nasturtiums re-seed. Calendula (pot marigolds) do but don't seem to be weedy. It may be too cold in our zone for nasturtiums to re-seed but thanks for the warning.

Lots of good advice here. I would also suggest a weeding tool you enjoy using. For me, it's something that has been called a Cape Cod weeder. The one I use now has a similar L-shaped blade. It's a hand tool and makes weeding so much easier for me. I also have a scuffle hoe but a hand tool is better once beds get crowded with plants.

I have had very good luck with well composted horse manure that has ashes and bedding mixed in. I have not liked straight horse or steer manure because it seems to dry in chunks.

I cover paths with layers of newspaper topped with grass clippings. Then I don't have those paths to weed. If you have un-planted areas, I would do the same.
Hope you have a much better garden this year.

That is frustrating to have to pull weeds for hours and in the end still feel like you can't control them.

I think your idea to let weed seeds sprout then kill them while they are young and then later do the newspaper layers is a really good idea.

Until I have my own garden plot to plant in ground (once we build a new home) I will be bringing back with me newspapers from the US every time I visit so that I will be able to use newspaper as mulch and to control weeds. Unfortunately, the newspapers here are most likely not printed with soy based ink (and I can't get a straight answer from anyone) so I have to bring as much as I can from overseas.

I swear you are me! We just bought our house last year and instead of grass the yard is weeds! I'm starting small this year to try to get the weeds under control. I started with one area (my front yard) and spent hours removing ALL the weeds. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. Now, I'm on maintenence. I water and walk through once or twice a week to keep up with it. It really takes me 5 minutes 2 times a week.

Unfortunately, my backyard is one giant weed mess. I've broken the yard into 4 areas that need to be weeded and I am working my way through those areas. As I finish an area it goes onto the "maintain" list. I feel that I have more success when I break it into areas because I can sit here and say, "Well my yard might be a weed zone but my front yard is weed free!" I know I will have weeds this year, but this is the year where I will not let a single weed flower!

Lofty goals, right?! Good luck with your own!

We don't have nasturtiums reseed here, either. Or morning glories, for that matter. With our cold winters, it's difficult to even get cosmos and alyssum to reseed. But, of course, the weeds manage to do it with no problem! LOL

Make sure you use straw and not hay. I believe hay can have seeds in it. That would add to your weeding. I like straw since I first used it to keep the strawberries off the ground.
-Tim

Tim- I used hay to cover my weed mat 2 years ago. I remember asking about what to use for mulch and there was a hot debate over hay or straw and which contained seeds and which would breakdown and somehow settled on hay. I wonder if that explains why there was a top 3 inches of grassy weed when I dug everything up last weekend. Looks like I won't be using the last bale I have on reserve!

Native planter- You are absolutely correct. The compost delivery yesterday did not help matters in the least. We had a wet day previously, so when the farm came to drop off the load they got stuck. Needless to say our lawn looks like it was used for monster truck mudding. The look I got from my husband was not a good one. He did however help me shovel the compost into the tire treads and across the garden bed. I calculated what I'd need before hand and I easily needed 50 sq ft or more. But the 4 yards they delivered (36 sq ft) filled the garden to an over flowing mound almost 4 ft above the actual raised bed!

UGH.

So here I am with what looks like a 24' mounded grave (hopefully for my jack and the bean stalk weed) of hot compost. I covered it with clear plastic to let it bake a bit more until I'm ready to plant. But I have to wonder how I'm going to cover this monstrosity with newspaper and mulch. It's really a funny site...to a point. What have I gotten myself into?

I'll take pictures this weekend.

Hi Salem_girl,

I just wanted to let you know that one yard of dirt (or compost) is actually 27 square feet, not 9 square feet. It may help when calculating your needs in the future.

Good luck with your adventure. It does get easier.

Just curious...why are dirt calculations different? Man 1/2 would've been great. :(

A "yard" of topsoil is 27 square feet if it is spread 1" thick. A cubic yard is a block that is 3'x3'x3'. A yard of topsoil weighs a ton or more, so the guy who delivered it should have known better than to drive over the lawn, and should have repaired the damage he caused.

There is no reason to cover the compost with plastic unless you are expecting a lot of rain. If it is still hot, it is still decomposing, and not ready to plant into anyway. As it decomposes, it will shrink - if it is relatively immature and highly organic, without a lot of soil mixed in, it may end up only 1/3 the volume it is now.

You should be very especially nice to your husband this week.

OK, time for damage control. My advice: unless you have someone in mind to take the extra compost, go on Craigs List and offer free compost to whoever will shovel it. You could try charging, but let's face it - they will have to work rather hard to get the extra compost out of your bed and into their truck. And you need to get things looking better asap, for the sake of your future garden.

Secondly, my advice again is to NOT cover the soil with newspaper and mulch this year. Trust me, weeds will still get through it and if you have a busy few weeks, your husband may get cranky. Straw does carry oat seeds, which are easy to pull up when young, but still, it is weeding to be done. This is what I would do this year (and maybe next):

Go to your local big box store and get weed barrier fabric (this is different from a tarp). It is something like this:

http://www.homedepot.com/Outdoors-Garden-Center-Landscape-Supplies-Weed-Barrier-Underlayment/Easy-Gardener/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbx4qZhv/R-202043542/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051

Once you put it in place, DO NOT MULCH, but plant though it. What you get would look something like this:

http://clearwaterlandscapes.com/garden-shop2/fpss/slideshows/welcome/images/rainweave.jpg

or this:

http://knechts.net/weblog/post/2616/

So it's not Martha Stewart pretty. Nor is it biodegradable (I really try to avoid plastics myself). But it's TIDY and EASY. And desperate times call for desperate measures. My experience with spouses is that something like this is quite acceptable. After doing this for a couple years (and the fabric should last a couple seasons at least), and the garden starts being an accepted member of the family, you could start easing towards removing part of the fabric and using natural mulches instead.

Meanwhile, bi11me is right - be especially nice to your husband this week. And maybe outline your plans for getting it to looks spiffy on paper, and show him, so that he doesn't spend the next couple weeks stewing over whatever images he might be conjuring up!

Yes, the problem with the math is that you were thinking sq ft, which is area, and dirt is sold by volume, or cubic feet. So next time you need to figure it, remember it is the area you want to cover, times the depth you want it to be. Maybe you could spread some of that composty goodness to other spots to make it less grave-like? Or, go rustle up some quick art supplies and make a cardboard gravestone... "here lies Dear Husband. He always said my gardening would be the death of him..."

8 years ago my husband was anti-garden. I started him off slow by making the house look better with flowers. There was some balking at the first veg garden, but then I started feeding him fresh vegetables and he rediscovered that he actually liked them! Now he is proud use our produce at the restaurant, and is talking about building a greenhouse (balking at the more economical high hoops I really want, alas). Perserverance pays off!

I say ask hubby if he would prefer the weed barrier fabric or if he prefers the look of mulch.. But I like all the suggestions here.. Especially the 'start small' idea.. Naturally, a smaller garden is easier to weed then a bigger one.. Then when you learn what works best for keeping down the weeds you can go bigger..

Upon re-reading my post, I think it might come across as being a touch bossy - sorry if it did; that wasn't my intent at all. I only meant to stress that one doesn't have to mulch over the weed barrier.

Kittikity has a good idea about asking your husband. He may like having a little "ownership" over what it looks like. You can go over the pros and cons of different looks.

I was also thinking - Preen makes an organic pre-emergent weed control product that you sprinkle on the garden. It's made of corn gluten. You could use it in areas where you set out transplants right away. In areas where you seeded, you could use it after the seedlings are well established (I'm sure the directions say how long to wait).

There are some great ideas here.

In addition to this, might I suggest Corn Gluten (i.e. Preen). It can be purchased at any agriculture mill that mixes grains for livestock. I just paid $30.00 for a 50lb bag, WAAY less than the price of Preen. It prevents germination of seeds, so it would need to be applied now, depending on your location. Once the seeds germinate it won't do any good.

Sometimes this is sold as a fertilizer, it is very high in nitrogen.

Brendasue

If you're in the northeast, then you could check Ocean State Job Lots for landscape fabric. It's probably about half what Home Depot charges.

As far as asking people to take away some extra compost, I'd try to trade compost now for something else you need. Weeding help comes to mind but many local gardeners would be willing to trade plants that they've started from seed. Last year, a woman in town was digging up her extra irises and I traded her some of my extra tomatoes for her unwanted flowers. We were both happy!

Some of that compost could be the start of your new compost pile also.

I'd try to come up with any easy, not-too-expensive vegetable or herb that your husband loves. Mammoth basil for pesto? Fresh dill in his eggs? Mint for mojitos? Arugula for a salad in a month? Is he, by any chance, a person who likes to build things? Mine is and while he doesn't want to do anything with the actual veggies, he does enjoy the challenge of trying to make scaffolding or trellises that will withstand the heirloom tomato growth. Try to figure out something that he'll enjoy even if it's tangental. I won't try to understand how my dh's chainsaw figured into my garden development but he really likes it.

I use the newspaper and mulch method. It keeps the weeds down fairly well and enriches the soil when it rots down. I also spent a little time each day touring the garden and pulling out weeds as I see them. It is a lovely peaceful activity.

Last year I replanted my strawberries and put the newspapers around each plant. However I was worried about the runners being able to root in mulch so I covered the newspapers in composted cow manure. The weeds were kept down and the runners had soil to sink their little roots into.

Also, I did not notice any information about rotating your crops. It is important not to plant the same crop (in my case tomatoes) in the same spot every year because diseases winter over and cause problems the next year. There should be at least 3 years between crops. So, remember to rotate your tomatoes to different sections of the garden each year for best results.