Hi

I am a yard rookie. Learning a lot here on these forums. I have a 6 years old home in Canton north of Atlanta, GA.

My front yard is small 20 x 20 but very downhill and up to 2 years ago invaded by weeds. It is so downhill that I can't bring the lawn mower so I would weed wack the weeds.

2 years ago I got tired of it and spend 2 days pulling all the weeds by hand, and moving the soil, it was bare by day's end. Then I planted 18 small Junipers purchased at home depot and mulched with pine needles.

I never took care of that front yard the following year and it of course became a mess again quickly, I thought the Junipers were going to take off on their own, they didn't.

6 weeks ago (january) I was on vacation and decided to tackle the problem early this season while weeds were dormant, so back to home depot and I placed more pine needle on the dead/sleeping weeds, the juniper looked fine but not growing much.

Today I went to home depot and bought more pine needle, my front yard is already littered by weeds even small, so I sprayed Ortho weed and grass killer on the weeds, pulled some, and mulched again with the pine needle, the good news some Junipers show good growth.

I have a feeling it's not going to be enough, too many weeds already.

Now the questions:

1) What would you do? (No hire a pro answer plz.)

2) Shall I use roundup weed killer opposed to Ortho, can the weed killer damage the junipers?

3) I have never fertilized the junipers, what shall I use to help them grow but not the weeds?

4) I just read the newspaper trick, to control weeds, shall I try it?

My goal is to have the junipers take over the front yard and choke the weeds (I know easy to say, hard to do).

I know weeds will always be there but if I could reduce their amount by 80% in that spot that would be great.

Thanks a lot

Patrick