I put straw down on my veggie garden to keep the weeds down.

[Raven]

Not over my plants, of course! It looks golden and beautiful but will it work??? Anyone?

[Blue Gardener]

1. Should work fine

Plus it will break down and add nutrients to the soil.

[sazemisery]

2. Will work great but...

You might get some volunteer plants from whatever kind of straw it is. I have used oat and wheat straw and just have to weed the volunteers out.

[Melissa G]

3. A friend of mine told me about a book written by a gardener, who had a lifelong love of gardening

but had gotten to old too keep to her previous levels of effort. He said she got good results just throwing out seeds and tossing straw on top of the seeds.

Kinda like it happens in nature anyway.

Given this book's story, I'm not sure how well straw, by itself, will keep down the weeds.

[lizziegrace]

4. That sounds like the story of the woman who wrote

Lasagna Gardening.

[Melissa G]

5. maybe... I thought it was a different title, though.

I'm a pasta fiend and would have remembered that name. But I too, am getting up there and having lots of senior moments!

[lizziegrace]

6. The author of Lasagna Gardening

mentioned her method had been compared to another's.

[lizziegrace]

7. Ruth Stout maybe?? n/t

[Arkansas Granny]

13. I used to have a book by Ruth Stout called "How to Have a Green Thumb

Without and Aching Back". I wonder what happened to that book.

[druidity33]

14. Ruth Stout

she pioneered the "no-dig" approach to Gardening.

She has a couple good books. She didn't just "throw seeds about" though.

Straw in a THICK layer can keep down anything. Just make sure you water the ground thoroughly when using a heavy mulch. I prefer rotted hay to straw, but almost anything will do.

[Vinca]

8. I put paper down first and then put straw on top of that.

Some years I've used newspapers and more recently I've shelled out for big rolls of Kraft paper (bought off ebay) and we roll the stuff down the rows and cut it off. We add a hefty layer of straw on top of that. As the plants grow, I fill in with straw around the plants. There comes a point every summer where I have an almost effortless, weed-free garden. The garden seems to grown every year and is now about half an acres, so I have to mulch to be able to keep up with it.

[WheelWalker]

9. Be careful, or you'll end up with a bunch of these....

[bvar22]

10. If you put down "straw", you will be fine.

"Straw" is the stalk of an agricultural grain crop (wheat, alfalfa, barley, etc.) after the grain tops have been removed.
While straw will have a few residual seeds that can germinate, it should pose no problems.

"Hay" is sometimes called straw, but "hay" contains the seed tops of all kinds of weeds and grasses.
Hay is harvested for animal feed, and can cause problems when used as mulch.

Real straw is difficult to come by here. We use hay in our chicken house, and decided to use it in the garden last year. We laid down hay between the raised boxes, and it looked beautiful.



By late July, we had an explosion of Bermuda Grass. It was everywhere.
Some runners have even managed to grow under the sides of the raised boxes, and has emerged inside the boxes.
That stuff is a mess.
We won't be using hay inside our garden again.

[ima_sinnic]

11. I mulch everything with straw, hay, and grass clippings & it is fabulous

I look for signs or ads for "mulch hay," which is hay that has rotted. Because it has started to decompose, the weed seeds are pretty much nonfunctional. If I can't find mulch hay, I buy a bale of regular hay and leave it out in the weather for a while before spreading it on the garden.

Grass clippings work well also, but they tend to pack down into slippery mats.

I always make a point of waiting until just after a rain before spreading mulch. That way, the soil is moist, and I'm locking in the moisture. After the hay has been spread for a couple of weeks, push it back to see the activity going on. The interface between hay and soil is alive with organisms breaking down the hay and feeding the soil. The soil will be black and crumbly.

I rarely have any weeding to do--only the spots without mulch. Neighbors' gardens without mulch always look naked and barren to me. They waste a lot of time weeding, and some waste a lot of space leaving rows big enough for their big-ass rototiller. Waste of time, space, and gas. They also think they have to fertilize with chemicals, but I never fertilize and have rich, black soil, because I regard soil as a living organism that has to be fed.

You can also grow potatoes under hay, without any digging at all. Just lay the cured pieces of potato on the ground about 6 inches apart and cover with hay about 18" deep.

You can throw vegetable scraps under the hay instead of bothering with a compost pile.

[NJCher]

12. these are all terrific suggestions

and I would add that one of the best gardening books on weeds says that rototilling is not only useless, it's damaging. In other words, rototilling breaks up the good soil action that's going on.


Cher

[uppityperson]

15. A decent layer is great, but even a very thin scattering can help also

A couple of my beds need help (additives like sand and compost). If I put a thin bit of straw or even handfuls of grass I tore up from around the garden, the soil stays much softer than if I put down nothing. I'd like to put at least 1/2-1 inch layer, but even a scattering really helps keep the soil soft and makes pulling weeds easier.