Safeguard Your Vegetables Against Weeds With One Simple Technique - Tasting Table

Weed control is a daily need in home vegetable gardening because weeds occupy bed space and steal bioavailable nutrients from vegetables. Mulch provides an effective preventative barrier, and wood chips are a suitable organic option for edible gardens. Landscape fabric can be a poor fit because plastic materials may leach into surrounding soil over time. Spreading a generous layer of wood chips around plants can prevent weeds from establishing. Fresh wood chips must be aged for six to eight months because fresh woody biomass contains phytotoxins that can harm shallow-rooted vegetables and pull nutrients. Aging is done by stacking chips and letting them weather until phytotoxins break down. Apply a 2- to 5-inch layer in early spring, ideally after rain, without covering new plant buds.

"Weeds can choke out new veggie growth by occupying the valuable real-estate space in your garden bed - and, worse, they can swipe the soil's bioavailable nutrients away from the veggies. Luckily, there's one effective preventative measure that many home gardeners might already be using elsewhere in their yard, but overlooking in the vegetable garden: mulch. More specifically, it's time to break out the wood chips."

"Landscape fabric isn't always the best fit for edible gardens due to its plastic materials, which can leach into the surrounding soil over time. By contrast, wood chips are a type of organic mulch that bring a natural benefit to the physical barrier strategy, blocking weeds from growing around your veggies. Sprinkling your vegetable garden with a layer of wood chips can help stamp out weed growth before it ever starts."

"Fresh woody biomass contains phytotoxins, compounds that occur naturally, but can pull nutrients from shallow-rooted veggie plants and harm their growth. Properly aging wood chips is a simple process, but requires some patience: Just stack fresh wood chips and leave 'em in a pile. As the pile weathers, those phytotoxins will gradually break down."

"To make that aged mulch work for your veggie garden, apply a 2- to 5-inch layer of wood chips in early spring before any weeds pop up for the season. If possible, try to apply them right after a rainstorm when the soil is still wet, taking care not to cover any small new veggie-plant buds."

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