T wrote:

The weeds are winning.

I got down on my hands and knees with my knee pads
and gloves and took out two 45 gallon trash bags of
weeds this week. Mostly cheat grass. And that
is only 2/5 of the front yard. I have not started
my back yard yet.

I can not do this anymore. I am too old. And
it is a fire hazard.

The front yard, I will just have someone lay
down new plastic and re-rock it.

sounds reasonable in an arid climate and very
easy to care for for a while. in the end what
matters a lot for installations of this kind are
what kind of wind deposition of sand/dirt you
might get and any weed seeds blow in on the wind
also if you get any water run off across the area
you need the rocks to be sized to keep erosion
under control.

any gravel we put in here in some locations
many years ago now has so much dirt in it and
humus from the trees dropping needles that it
can support plants growing. it needs to be taken
up and cleaned out. which is more work than i
want to do so we are letting some thyme grow in
it and i try to keep the worst of the weeds out
of it.


The back yard (my garden), I am thinking of having
someone put in tiles and raised beds:

https://shop.epicgardening.com/produ...sed-garden-bed

https://shop.epicgardening.com/produ...sed-garden-bed

very expensive for some hunks of coated metal,
but pretty much any raised bed i consider a waste
of $ especially in an arid climate. how you
going to keep them watered and from getting too
hot? you may need some kind of shading.


I am at a loss as to what to put down on the
rest of the yard. Tiles? Plastic decking?

how large an area?

i'm just remembering when you couldn't grow
anything at all there. two bales of free organic
material.

95% of the weeding i do here is using a
stirrup hoe. which means i am standing up and
scraping any weeds off at the surface. it is
pretty quick and i can cover a few thousand
square feet in an hour or two. once a week or
so depending upon how much rains we've had.
not many weeds survive this treatment.

the remaining close weeding is needed to get
around plants in particular patches. this only
has to be done when the garden plants are small
and cannot shade the ground enough to prevent
weeds from growing. after a few rounds of
close weeding most gardens here are set for
the rest of the summer unless we miss a few
earlier.

you could probably put down thick black mil
plastic and hold it down with some rocks and that
would smother any areas you need to get back
under control.

i much prefer using cardboard and woodchips
but it sounds like you are worried about fire
control there and we don't have that sort of
problem.

using larger crushed and rinsed stone is ok
but you do need to make sure it is down thick
enough that any weed seeds that blow in cannot
easily germinate. and having good borders along
the gardens will keep any temporary weeds still
alive under the black plastic from getting into
your gardens. after a year or three anything
under the black plastic will be dead.


songbird