Depends on the newspaper. The Daily Oklahoman pages are so thin that you may not get good coverage and no way could they impede decent water flow.

Cochiseiokc, I am using the Tulsa World, and putting down about 4-6 pages at a time. Years ago, I use to do this when making new flower beds, and it worked great. I didn't, however, have soaker hoses that I was covering. It would be hard (if not impossible) to shove/push full layers of wet paper under the existing hoses, and I don't want to tear up the tomato plants pulling the hoses out.

I don't think it will clog the soaker hoses, but I'm also not convinced it will smother out the weeds. The use of the soaker hose will make it easier for the weeds (particularly the bermuda grass) to push up and grow through the newspaper and mulch. While several thicknesses of newsprint with mulch on top will smother out annual weeds pretty easily, I think that when bermuda grass is a part of the equation, it makes the process more complicated. Still, though, I can't really think of what you have to lose by trying. What's the worst thing that could happen? The weeds grow through the newspaper and emerge through the mulch placed on top of it? If that happens, then you can find another way to deal with the weeds.

Having said the above, I am a hopelessly old-fashioned gardener who believes in removing the weeds by pulling them out and/or digging them out. I do have mulch down----up to 4" thick in places, and it is in pathways and raised beds and on grade-level planting areas, but I still work really hard to keep those weeds out of there. It is just too easy to think you're smothering weeds beneath newspaper/cardboard/mulch only to discover late in the season all those weeds are still there, still growing and still need to be removed at some point. As long as they are alive and growing, they are competing with your tomato plants for food and water, whether you can see them or not.

It isn't that I mind weeding, but rather that I have disabilities and they can be quite challenging. This level of invasion is overwhelming me, and I have to slow it down some. I think Dawn is right: I have nothing to lose right now by "super smothering".

Thanks:)

You might laugh, but although I have no business trying to do a garden anymore, I just haven't been able to give it up:) Long story as to why that is. I am already plotting next year's garden, and how I can "outsmart" some of this "weed takeover" (not just my garden, but my whole yard seems to have been reduced to nothing more than chickweed, and henbit and their ugly cousins).

krinkle, I'm the same way with weeding. I am all over the weeds from late winter through late spring, but at some point the time that I had been spending on weeding/mulching turns into time spent processing a large harvest and then the weeds start making a comeback. Still, even then, in between harvesting and processing the harvest, I still find time at certain points to weed and clean up the garden....until I start running into venomous snakes in the garden. After that starts happening, I no longer can weed easily because I have to be really, really careful about sticking my hand into a bed to weed. Thus, snake season gives way to weed season. The better a job I've done at weeding and mulching prior to that, the less I lose control of it after the snakes begin appearing, but I'm not stupid and I'm not going to stick my hands into vegetation to pull weeds once I'm seeing copperheads or timber rattlers in the garden.

Eventually, sometime in autumn, I get the weeds back under control unless it is an exceptionally bad snake year. Last year was an exceptionally bad snake year because the flooding drove snakes up out of the bottom lands into adjacent land like ours. I'm hoping we don't get a repeat of that this year. However, we've already had one round of river flooding this spring and it drove some snakes up onto our land and into my garden that I'd never seen before----Graham Crayfish Snakes. After all this time, I can't believe we have a type of snake we've never seen before. As far as I know, there are not any crayfish in my garden (there was one last year), but these snakes are in there eating my frogs, toads and lizards. It has been almost two weeks since I have run into a snake in my garden, so the weeds are under control really well at this point. I'm not sure how long that will last. The snakes are one reason I trellis everything I can, including all melons including icebox melons. The more plants I have trellised, the easier it it to harvest without sticking my hand down into an area that might be harboring a snake.

Mary, I fight a tremendous weed battle with the newer back garden every year. It is a lot younger than the front garden and I've never been able to get the weeds firmly under control early enough in the season to please me. While the front garden is nice and manageable, the back one always seems to be teetering on the edge of weed disaster. It doesn't help that the back garden has sandy soil and is constantly invaded by voles. There's a weedy corner of it that always has been infested with Johnson grass, and trying to keep the grass out drives me up the wall. Nothing I've planted in that part of the garden can outcompete the Johnson grass. I'm considering cutting all that stuff down to the ground with the weedeater and covering that part of the garden with clear 6 mm plastic for the entire summer to let the heat solarize it. I'd have to give up one-fourth of the garden space in the back garden in order to do that, but it seems like an appealing option right now.

I remember how excited I was when we broke all that ground and fenced it in. It was so clean and clear and beautiful that first year, and I did a pretty good job of keeping the weeds out. I haven't been as successful since. I think partly it is that I get so preoccupied with planting/weeding/mulching the front garden that I just don't get to the back garden quickly enough. Last year we got 24" of rain just in May, and I gave up on even trying to do anything with the back garden. This year, we got ahead of the rain and broke up half the ground out back. It helps that we've only had 2" of rain so far this May, so we aren't under water like we were last year. I have corn and some herbs growing back there now, and the rest of the cleared ground is about to be planted in winter squash and melons, but that weedy Johnson grass area is just almost beyond salvation....hence the soil solarization that is being planned.

Fighting weeds is an inevitable part of gardening, but it sure does get old fast. Looking ahead to our happy golden years, I think our garden eventually will get smaller because I'll get to the point where keeping the weeds out of a bigger garden is just too much work for me at that stage in my life. I think I probably could reach the point where I'd be perfectly happy with a garden that was nothing but 15 or 20 Earth Boxes, and I'd pour a concrete patio and have them sitting on it to keep weeding to a minimum.

Dawn

If you have access to a shredder, or anyone that routinely shreds regular printer paper, you might try that. My dad has used shredded printer paper for years and it will form a nice mat on its own (a good soaking and/or rain will help with that)...just don't try to lay it all down on a windy day!
Before you do that, though, do you know anyone with a Boy or Girl Scout or 4H-er that might need service hours? They could get it weeded for you and then you can put the paper down.

Sharon