If you plant a garden every year and love spending time weeding it, don't bother reading this post. However, if you love to garden, but hate to weed your garden this post is for you!
I prefer to avoid chemicals when it comes to food for my family, and have found a method to almost completely eliminate the weeds from our vegetable garden without using any of those harmful chemicals.
This method simply requires cardboard and mulch (both of which can be acquired for free). Once you have acquired your supplies, simply place the cardboard down around the plants covering the garden bed completely. Be sure to overlap the cardboard pieces so that it will block out the weed growth as much as possible. The photo above shows some cardboard strips that I was able to get at not cost simply by asking. The picture below is one free load of mulch I picked up from a tree care dump site.
I began this project by laying cardboard down in one corner of the garden and working my way down and out from there overlapping every piece to form a nearly solid garden cover in one section at a time. Once the cardboard was down in an area I felt was large enough, I began spreading mulch over it being careful to not mulch al the way to the edges. This allowed me to place the next round of cardboard down overlapping the previous set.
As I continued on this project over a few days, I couldn't believe the transformation taking place in my garden. It went from full of weeds requiring my attention every couple of days to a garden that had almost no weeds at all! The weeds that do grow are so easy to pull that the task is nearly effortless. When completed your garden will look similar to the portion of my garden in picture below.
The photo above shows my tomato plants after I finished mulching around them. This project has taken a little bit of time to complete, but the amount of time I will save far outweighs the initial time invested.
I hope this has given you some ideas about how to make your gardening life more enjoyable and rewarding.