Subliminal Gardening

Fished flower bed... now just waiting for blooms!

My husband recently built me a set of raised cedar gardening beds, and I rushed to fill them with a variety of purple, pink, and cream blooming flowers.  After all that work, I made the foolish decision to save mulching for another day.  Naturally the weeds popped up in only a few days, and I found myself crawling in between prickly rose bushes to pluck out the unwanted bits of grass and unidentified leafy bits.  Not only was I covered in dirt and scratches, but I just couldn’t seem to pluck out every little blade of grass.

I’ve used mulch in the past and spent an equal amount of time crawling around to pick out stubborn weeds.  So this year, I vowed to try landscaping fabric to prevent unwanted greens from penetrating my perfectly mulched beds.  This supposedly magical product is laid over the dirt and under the mulch, with only the desired plants popping out, and kills the weeds by blocking the sunshine to the remainder of the bed. However, I wasn’t ready to drop any more cash, since I already spent too much on cedar, top soil, compost, annuals, and perennials. So I brainstormed a more economical solution.

I browsed the internet for ideas, and the most common substitute for landscaping fabric is newspaper. A few layers of leftover newspaper achieve similar sun-blocking action, while also biodegrading to “feed” plants the following year.  Other suggested substitutes included using paper bags, cardboard, or even plastic bags to create a bedding barrier.  So I looked in my recycling closet, and found zero newspaper, an insufficient stack of paper bags, and a boatload of magazines.  Most of the articles I read insisted that the glossy, colored pages wouldn’t be best for this application; however, it seems to me that it ought to be better than a plastic bag.  So I went to work.

In the process of layering magazine pages and mulch through the flower beds.

In my magazine inventory, I found several issues of organic gardening magazines and catalogues.  How appropriate!  I started to think that if I surrounded my plants with bight colorful pictures of perfectly blooming plants, they might be inspired to follow suit.  I also grabbed a copy of my new favorite magazine in hopes of making my task more simple. In my opinion, the magazine pages were just the right size to get in between all the plants and edges, although I did find the wind to be problematic.  But with a few spare rocks and random gardening tools, I was able to weigh down the sheets of paper long enough to pour on the mulch.

I checked the finished product this morning, and the glossy pages were still moist from the overnight watering. Just what I had wanted!  Thus far I am happy with the texture and weight, which seems to absorb water sufficiently to water the soil but is heavy enough to block the light.  I’ll let you know if my plants pick up on the subliminal messages left by the articles.