Ecnerwal wrote:
....
Creeping buttercup is currently my least-favorite weed; it will find the
surface from being buried 6" down and mulched over. I now aim for
partially dry and (sealed, anerobic) compost on that stuff.

if you're willing to use shredded paper then plain cardboard
or cardboard with some black ink on it is very good for
smothering hard to get rid of weeds. a few layers overlapped
so that water can get through will work just fine. then put
your mulch on top. by the time the cardboard gets broken
down by worms/pill bugs/fungi, etc. the weeds have usually
run out of energy. i use this method on most of the spots that
turn out to be a lot of trouble and i don't want to disturb
them by digging up the entire area. much less work than digging
and pulling weeds out too. especially considering you can
usually get cardboard for free from almost any store.

i used this method last year along a fence that was being
taken over by pennyroyal and also a low area that was collecting
weed seeds that i wanted to cover. spent about 5 minutes the
rest of the season getting a few stragglers along an edge. in
the low spot eventually the bark pieces and stuff i put in
there will be good humus to scrape up and use someplace else
and i can put down another round for the worms to work on.


songbird