Newspaper Decline

Newspapers are not only doing poorly at the newsstands these days, but also in our garden. Andrea has been boning up on some serious garden reading as can be evidenced by the literature represented to the left. However, one book idea is being thrown out due to practicality. We placed newspapers as mulch over the sweet potatoes, and had planned to do so for the tomatoes.

Well, practicality won out and having more rocks than mulch resulted in going back to the drawing board and coming up with a new game plan. For the tomatoes we decided to go with landscape felt to control the inevitable weeds.

This worked much better for the scale of garden we are dealing with, even if it isn't granola. Andrea decided to replace the newspaper in the sweet potatoes with shredded paper, so do not lose heart we are still recycling.

We also covered the peppers with shredded paper while the beets and newly replaced kohlrabi received grass clippings.

Newspapers may work well for small urban planter beds like the square foot gardening some of my friends are implementing this year, but it does not work well on a large scale windswept rural garden. The landscape felt installed like a charm and should work well for the herbs and tomatoes.