Bob,

You can smother and otherwise control the weeds and there are several options for doing so.

1. Lay down sheets of newspaper, roughly 8 to 12 pages thick (more if you like) and overlap them by a couple of inches so weeds can't spring up in the gaps between pages. Then, cover the newspaper with something that will hold it down...grass clippings, straw (less likely to have seeds than hay will), compost (stuff may sprout in it though), bark mulch/hardwood tree trimmings, shredded leaves, pine needles, etc. The easiest way to spread the news paper is to have 2 people (or more) and have one (or more) lay down the paper followed immediately by the second person wetting down the paper to keep it from blowing away before you can cover it up.

2. Even more effective than newspaper is cardboard. Lay it down, wet it down and cover it with something to hold it it place.

3. You can "solarize" your soil and keep down the growth of weeds at the same time by putting a large sheet of plastic over the proposed garden site. Be sure the ground and sprouting weeds are good and wet before you lay down the plastic because you want to kill the weeds and cause them and their roots to rot. Use rocks, landscape timbers, landscape fabric staples or something to hold the plastic down so it won't blow away. The heat of the sun and the plastic will combine to form a "greenhouse" effect. The heat will not only kill weeds and keep others from sprouting, it also will kill bacteria and viral diseases that live in the soil. The downside is that solarization will kill some of the beneficial biological life in the soil too, which is why you don't want to solarize every year. You can leave the plastic uncovered which causes more of a greenhouse effect, or you can cover it with an inch or so of mulch (not too much mulch or the ground will stay too cool).

4. You can use a pre-emergent weed killer, either organic or chemical, your choice depending on your gardening philosophy. That will keep additional weeds from sprouting but will not kill the ones that are already growing. If you are going to do this, the best time to apply is probably in mid-September or so. MANY cool-season weed seeds sprout in very latest summer to very earliest fall and stay very tiny until late winter when they suddenly have a growth spurt and get big overnight. So, by putting out a pre-emergent before they sprout, you stop them before they really get going. The downside to using a pre-emergent in the fall is that it sometimes can keep seeds from sprouting in the spring (although it ought to wear away by then). So, if you do put out a pre-emergent in the fall, you'll have to till the soil in late winter or early spring before planting and that WILL bring up some weed seeds that will sprout and compete any seeds you plant.

5. One of the most logical things you can do is till the soil and plant a winter cover crop that will grow and essentially crowd out any cool-season weeds or grasses that try to grow. Not only will a thickly-sown cover crop crowd out common weeds, it will prevent soil erosion. Several weeks before planting time, just till the cover crop into the soil where it will decompose and enrich the soil.

6. Some people like to rototill up their garden plot 2 or 3 times over the course of the winter. There are some logical reasons for doing this.....it exposes cool-season weed seeds to daylight and they sprout and THEN you pull them up while they are small or hoe them out. It also exposes insect pests that overwinter in the soil which, if the air temps. are cool enough, can cause them to die. This works best if you have soil that is fairly dry in the winter and that drains well and it doesn't work so well with heavy clay or very rocky soil or if you have heavy winter rains that keep the soil too wet to till repeatedly. The downside with this method is that soil erosion can occur if heavy rains fall just after you've tilled AND, if it is a very rainy winter, you may not be able to rototill it often enough.

My favorite method, personally, of those I've suggested is cardboard or newspaper covered with medium-sized hardwood trimmings that have been chipped or shredded OR shredded leaves. The cardboard and newspaper do decompose eventually and help enrich the soil, and they also attract earthworms to the garden bed which is beneficial too. If you have access to either hardwood tree trimmings or lots of shredded or chopped leaves, you can pile them on the garden bed 6" to 8" deep even without the newspaper or cardboard and they should keep the weeds down. My second favorite choice would be a cool season cover crop....and it would be my first choice if I had a garden plot that was low in organic content.

Good luck,

Dawn

A pound or two of crimson clover seed thrown densely out on bare ground at the end of September will work wonders until late April of next year.