Instead of the landscape fabric, use newspaper. Laid down in overlapping
layers of 4-6 sheets, it works very well as a weed barrier. It won't
create a problem with the tiller.

I use bark mulch on my perennial beds, and add a few inches each spring to
top it up. On my vegetable beds, I use a thick straw mulch (not hay, too
many weed seeds), with a newspaper base under the straw paths. It looks
very neat, IMO. The garden is practically weed-free, with little effort.

Cheers,
Sue

Zone 6, Southcentral PA


"Dylan Keon" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

We live in NW Oregon and have a 90' x 30' garden plot that we set up
last spring. It's split into several long raised beds with ~1.5' paths
in between. No boards or anything, just long mounds of soil with paths
in between.

The weeds are a real problem this spring. We tried planting a cover
crop (clover) last fall but it didn't grow that well. We now have a
heavy covering of weeds in both the beds and the paths. I'd like to
create weed free paths for this season (we'll weed and till the beds
when the weather dries up a bit, but I don't want to till the paths),
and also develop a plan for keeping the weeds from coming back in full
force next spring.

My plan for the beds is to use a heavy covering of leaves over all of
them next fall, which will keep the weeds down and will give us
something to till into the soil next spring. For the paths, I'm
currently thinking of weeding, covering with weed barrier cloth, and
then covering with a couple inches of wood chips. I think this idea is
pretty good, but I am concerned about: 1) tilling right next to the weed
barrier cloth, 2) the mess it might make as soil from the beds gets
mixed with the chips, and 3) what a pain it will be to clean up the
chips if we decide to reconfigure the garden.

So, after this long-winded explanantion...can anyone give advice about
using wood chips this way?

Thanks,
Dylan