My favorite way, and most successful way, to keep weeds from sprouting up
everywhere in my vegetable garden is to layer the area with thick (whole
sections) of black/white newspaper and then mulch with either grass
clippings, shredded (non-treated) hardwood mulch, or dried leaves.

I moved to a new house last fall and haven't had the time yet to develop a
large area for multiple gardens. I improvised and used a bed off the back
of my screened porch. It had a large clump of orange ditch lilies in the
middle and the rest was weeds and old mulch. I pulled as many as I could of
the large weeds and left the little ones. My kids, 11 & 13, were my
helpers. I would lay out the newspaper, overlapping edges so as not to
leave any gaps for weeds to pop through. The kids manned the hose and wet
it down for me. This keeps it in place so it doesn't blow away. I filled a
wheel barrow full of hardwood mulch and layered it on top of the newspaper.
Leave a small opening at the base of each plant so water flows in freely.
The rain will soak the mulch and seep right down through the newspaper. The
newspaper will, over time, break down naturally.

We have had tremendous amounts of rain this summer (water tables are maxed
out) and I have beautiful, lush tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans and
basil without a single weed in the area. Once in a while, crab grass tries
to come up through the small hole around the plant, but I just pluck it out
early. It's so easy to walk through the area.

I save every newspaper I can to use in my other gardens too. I have a large
hill (15' high x 120' long) that I will be clearing and planting with
perennials this fall. This will use a huge amount of papers and then I will
cover the area with weed block material that I pin down to keep in place. I
just cut a "t" in the fabric and plant the plants into the soil below. I
find that weed block material alone, does not keep the weeds down. Many
times, the weeds poke up through the fabric; that's why I use the newspaper
below. Weed block material is porous and allows water to penetrate, unlike
black plastic. It's sold in 3' x 25', 3' x 50', or 3' x 100' usually.

Good luck.

Penny
Zone 7b - North Carolina
"Mark A" wrote in message
m...
I want to start to use a mulch to keep down weeds in a vegetable bed
and wondered what was the best form of mulch to use? We water our
vegetables using a sprinkler system so that really puts black plastic
out of the frame.