Anyone used wet newspaper for a successful weed barrier?

[Ridgerunner]

It's possible water could run off instead of soaking in the ground through newspapers or anything else we are talking about. If they are wet, water will soak through, but not fast enough in a hard rain. I wait to put the newspaper down until the plants are up, like with beans, or after transplanting, like with tomatoes. There is a hole where the plant is coming through. I slope the ground under the newspaper so this is the low point. That's where the majority of the water enters the ground, right at the plant.

I understand that how warm and wet the season is will influence this. Also how late in the year you put in the newspaper. I've never had a problem with the newspaper still being in good enough shape to cause a problem when I turn the ground for the next year's crop. In different conditions that could be a problem.

I've also used the brown cardboard between rows and along the edge of the garden. Not the slick highly colored cardboard. I'm concerned about the chenicals and elements that make up the paint. Sometimes even that brown corrugated rots away before the next year, but sometimes I have to collect that and clean it out.

Someone mentioned Bermuda grass and even said some unkind things about it. I totally, thoroughly agree. I hate that stuff anywhere around my garden.

 

[thistlebloom]

I don't know of anything that will block bermuda. It will just run under whatever you put down until it reaches light. It was the bane of my life when I lived in a climate it grew in. The only thing that ever kept it under control ( without herbicides ) was constant, and I mean
constant vigilance. It was not unreasonable to patrol the beds almost daily for the sprouts.