In article
,
chen wrote:

OK I have gotten a lot of responses, and no I am not trying to kill
the planet--I just want to grow some veggies!

I live in Missouri, and have a lot of crab grass, thistle, and poison
ivy, etc. The garden patch has been extremely difficult to control
the weeds in the past couple of years.

I have tried mulching, almost 4" in deep across the whole area--does
little if anything to stop weeds.
I have tried black plastic, which seems to stop or slow down the
weeds--but makes everything else that much harder to grow.
I have sprayed repeatedly with RoundUP and everything else they sell
at Lowe's, and actually the only one that worked at all was a no name
brand that did kill the weeds for up to 2 weeks. But they came back.
I have tried burning the whole area, looks ugly for a couple of
months---but weeds came back.
I have crawled around on my hnds and knees pulling all of them out and
removing the roots and all. Still they came back.


Gardening should not have to be this difficult. Com'on folks tell the
secret potion I need to fix things so I can have a good garden this
summer.

Get a Japanese gardening knife and a hula hoe and a warren hoe. Start
with a very small garden and expand when you have got the small the way
you want it.

http://www.vsb.cape.com/~nature/greencenter/newalchemy.html
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/search.aspx?SearchTerm=hoe
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-568-collinear-hoes.aspx

Bill

P.S. The one secret it to cultivate before the weeds emerge.

--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA