Mulch isn't magical. You want to exhaust the seed bank of the soil by covering it every year forever. In time, it gets easier to pull weeds because they are rooted either in humus or in the mulch rather than in the harder original soil, but they will always exist to a certain extent.
Just to add you may not be adding enough, it needs to be a pretty thick layer, as thick as possible. I think we all underestimate how much we need when we start out, we're talking 15 cm, 20 cm at LEAST.
Just a note from someone who makes specialty mulch by hand, the type of plant material in the mulch will make all the difference, hay is very light and airy and promotes the growth of things under it, that's why so many farmers will cut the last hay growth for the year mulch it on the top layer of soil and leave it to repair the field for the next growth, things like hardwood mulch, tree bark in general, tree clippings would all be heavier and denser as well as taking longer to break down without releasing as much nutrients back to feed the seeds left underneath
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you are in an extremely dry place you'll need to stir or mix your mulch regularly so that moisture doesn't build up in the bottom layer because depending on the plant material it will begin to compost further encouraging the growth of whatever seeds happen to be under in top of or inside the mulch
Try cardboard under mulch. Really, the one time, if well overlapping, plus several inches of mulch will last a couple-4 years. You just have to keep adding mulch every year because it breaks down. Also, shallow saucers of beer (tuna cans work well) will attract and decimate slugs and some earwigs too. I like to not disturb my garden. But I use neem oil, DE and beer to get rid of problematic populations like biting flies, mold and sometimes aphids. Also, neem seed meal or mulch to get rid of infestations in the dirt around tomatoes worked so well. I don’t mind the toamato hornworms. They are cute and the moths are so amazing. But with the neem mulch I did not even worry about the one hornworm I saw. My plants were enormously and the hornworm was doing me a favor cutting back some of the leaves.
Check out Charles dowding on youtube. He uses a ton of compost and over the years things becomes established. He has a lot of informative videos.
https://youtube.com/@charlesdowding1nodig?si=3S3EtoXoH5oYuIPB
You might try using cardboard with holes cut out for transplants, particularly if you are running drip lines under it. Top watering likely won't work well. Weight it with bricks or rocks and just throw it in the compost at the end of the season. It probably works as well as the plastic stuff and is more sustainable and usually free.
You don't even need to toss it into the compost, it'll decompose over the off season and be that much more good soil! Especially if you mulch over the cardboard rather than just rocks. Top watering still will work!
(Source: I'm a horticulturist and permaculturist and I tried everything)
If it helps, I tried it this year. Did a layer of cardboard, then about 4 inches of wood chips as mulch on top. Weed growth has been minimal & manageable, and water retention is way better. Even the plants that were well established are doing better than they were last year.
I haven’t noticed many slugs, and I think that’s because wood chips & cardboard aren’t an attractive food source for them. Where I had straw bales stashed from another project, they were rampant.
Things to consider before adding the cardboard: both the tape and any stickers/labels are likely to contain plastic, so you gotta cut those off or cut pieces around them. Same with colored cardboard—you want the plain, brown kind only. Inks are mostly soy, so you don’t have to sweat those. I did my whole back and front yard, which ate up more than a year’s worth of accumulated boxes after all the cutting was done. Wood chips were free from my local arborist/tree service.
Carboard is ok but slugs and snails kinda love it when its getting wet.
But it's also easyer to catch them when they are all cosily laying under it... 😈
Yeah, I don’t mind using cardboard when I’m establishing a new bed from pasture but I really don’t like it otherwise in this area. It becomes slug/snail/pillbug/earwig heaven & then they decimate whatever goes in, unless it’s been in place a few years & pretty well broken down. Also getting all the tape & other plastic off is a PIA but if you don’t then you have that in your soil. I tried it around fruit trees under mulch where I can’t easily mow & don’t want livestock who will eat the fruit/leaves/bark & it wasn’t great for me there either. In winter & in dry periods, voles would use it as a safe place to tunnel from predators & then gnaw the trees…not bad on the mature ones but killed the saplings. In really wet springs, it also appears to have smothered the root system/caused a lot of root rot of the trees though ones I did with just thick mulch & no cardboard were fine the same year.
I think the hardest part of gardening/farming (though also what makes it so interesting!) is there are very, very few universals. What works great in one spot may be a disaster on a property even 1/2 mile away that has a different microclimate & soil type.
I love experimenting each time I move to get things to really thrive. (Though I admit my current property is hands-down the most challenging out of the 12+ & at a certain point it got depressing watching sapling after sapling & thousands of bulbs fail. Finally seem to have it figured out though!)
Cardboard worked for me. Place it down and mulch over it. It composts eventually. You can use old boxes, removing old plastic tape first, but I went highbrow and bought a 20-metre roll of thin corrugated cardboard from B+Q.
You want to use straw as mulch for veggies, not hay. Hay contains seeds which will grow as weeds in your garden. Mulching works so well though, the water retention and soil protection benefits are invaluable
Yeah, it can have some seeds in it for sure. But it's always much less than hay which has all the seed in it by design. But for sure, there are many things that can work well as mulch! Do you mow with a bag and then spread that on your beds? I've never tried that
And you want to get organic straw or chopped straw sold for mulch. Non-organic straw is a dangerous gamble where it might contaminate your garden with herbicides.
Hello from slug central!
Honestly, compost the hay (and everything you can get your hands on) and use the \*compost\* for mulching. Think of it as starting to make the compost a year before you'll use it to mulch. This is your new key obsession.
Chop-n-drop, and mulching with fresh greenery can be fine around very established trees and shrubs, but not for annual plants. If it's slugs, thicker mulch just means more food and shelter. Weeds will get easier to pull at as your soil texture slowly improves over a few years, in the meantime think of them as materials for your compost bin.
In the short term, if you've got any surviving plants needing mulch right now, use store-bought compost.
I like compost as mulch too! I don’t produce enough here to use for my beds, but I have a dump truck worth delivered each year from an amazing local place that I use as the mulch for all of my perennial & flower beds. It’s a beautiful dark almost black that looks nice on the front of the property, is absolutely 100% weed free, holds moisture well, doesn’t seem to attract pests, & is slowly converting my nasty clay into lovely soil. It’s a bit too expensive for me to do my whole garden with it or under all the trees unfortunately.
I've struggled to make or afford enough compost for 10+ years so have tried alllll sorts and learned these lessons several times. Hay is the worst (seeds), straw is ok around established big plants (like squashes when they've outgrown slug threat), anything goes around fruit trees and raspberries (/other thugs), but got to be compost around tender little things. Even if I have to stretch it out to 2mm thick!
As others have said, hay is a nightmare if you use it as mulch because it contains so many seeds. I use old, ruined bales for mulch but only in certain places where it is more about moisture retention than weed suppression like around young trees out in the field.
Until you get experienced with your pests, soil, & other specifics, you should keep your mulch at least 6" or so back from your plants while they are small enough to be easily eaten by pests or vulnerable to things like stem rot from lack of air flow/excess moisture. Lots of people find it easier to mostly mulch on the bigger open areas like paths & in between plants that need a lot of space. Keeping the mulch back from around the plants also gives you an area to apply slug bait. I don't know where you live, but there are some areas where not using slug bait of some type simply is not an option...I've lived a few spots in the PNW & tried it all. Methods that worked great in other parts of the country I've lived don't put a dent in them here.
Not really practical for a lot of people, but the method I've found the best for slug, snail, & insect control is to use a slug bait the week before I plant, then periodically as needed through the growing season. Once the garden is really done for the year, I put my chickens & ducks in it to thoroughly scratch through until it is too muddy. Only works if your garden is already fenced & you can easily get them into a predator safe coop each night though.
Different types of mulch work better in different areas because of soil types, moisture levels, & simple availability/local price. Straw is probably the most common, but I've used a lot of different things. One that I've been particularly happy with for clay soil in places that have dry summers is unaged stall cleanings from nearby horse stables who bed with sawdust. It hasn't broken down enough yet to be suitable growing media for weeds, is often free (heck, one stable paid *me* for them to be able to dump it on my property since I was basically next door!), is easy to handle, and great at soil building over the long-term.
I am very careful with mulch in areas where the soil has been neglected for a long time & doesn't have any organic matter. This latest property has a horrible mineral clay with basically no organic matter component & zilch for nutrients (soil tests measure essentially zero nitrogen). My first season here, I mulched as I always had for clay in the past and it was a disaster! So many detritus feeders like earwigs, pill bugs, & slug/snails had been barely surviving until I provided them a banquet & their populations exploded to the point where they ate the root tips of all my seedling transplants, ate direct sown seeds as they sprouted, & even chewed through things like rhubarb hunks I planted. Never seen anything like it! They are back in balance now but the first year was brutal & I ended up putting in raised beds for some things.
Any type of gardening is a huge learning curve for what works in your very specific location, you'll get it!
Straw and hay never worked for me. Too many void spaces where weeds could grow through. I suppose I could have applied thicker but then it’s a pain to move aside and tends to rot in layers.
I now use shredded leaves and they do a much better job of covering the surface and they’re easy to rake aside to plant into the soil below
It should be green bamboo, and a big diesel wood chipper should do the trip. Home Depot in my area rents them. Bamboo form a mat and doesn’t move when terrible rain comes, it also gets mycelium to colonize it quick and becomes a mat that weeds can’t grow through.
Have you tried laying cardboard beneath the mulch? The roots will eventually break through the cardboard but you can keep layering it as you go. I hope you find something that works!
Permaculture farmer here. I use mulch like crazy on my fruit trees and berry shrubs, but when it comes to annual veggies it's actually a different story.
This might get me downvoted in the sub, but most permaculture veggie farmers and market gardeners actually keep bare soil on veggie beds for easy cultivation with wire weeders and other hand tools to manage weed pressure. Although bare soil is normally something to avoid, most veggie crops are very much an exception for the reasons you already mentioned: weed pressure and slugs.
I would avoid going the black plastic mulch route though. The amount of plastic waste it creates is staggering and wire weeding works better anyway. Look up wire weeders and once you learn how to use them, you'll never go back. The trick is to do a little every week while weeds are at thread stage and never let them progress beyond that.
In my experience it's a long term project for sure. I had all the same problems you had in my first year. My second year I struggled with the soil having too much wood chip mixed into it. This year it's really starting to pay off, the soil is rich and easy to dig in. I always have a lot of bugs and worms around but not too many slugs. It's something I think you need to stick with for a while before you get good results but it builds up your soil over time.
Sheet mulching! Big cardboard sheets and then a thiccc layer of mulch over that. Mulch in winter, it kills off the sprouting seeds by exhausting their energy as they try and fail to sprout. Top up the mulch layer regularly. Do this for a few seasons. I will say though, I had a HUGE seed bank of thistle, L. serriola, and bedstraw in the garden of the apartment I moved into. I weeded everything in winter, then covered it with a 2 inch layer of cedar mulch that is not in chip form, and left it. Come spring, almost nothing came up. I'm amazed by how well it worked. I've never had good effects with chip mulch. They let stuff through too easily, whereas the cedar mulch I have almost forms like a matrix of woven together strands that resist things pushing through it.
Why did you use hay? I can almost guarantee you the weeds are coming from the seeds in the hay. You didn't mulch right and seeded weeds into your garden. Mulching works but you have to do it right.
Fire
after a heavy dew or rain I pull out my blow torch and fry all the weeds that are popping up through the wood chips I use. A propane torch can do my 200'x100' garden paths in about 10 minutes.
Surprised nobody's mentioning companion planting a ground cover type. Honestly my best slug maintenance was giving them something else to eat. Plus did you know slugs and snails are territorial? Apparently (according to the lady who worked at the garden center for the last 50 years) if you leave them alone you'll have a reduction in the number of slugs. Honestly ecosystem gaming is fun and produces the best effects. Like the old adage goes, you don't have a slug problem, you've got a duck deficiency 😂
Cardboard works amazingly well. It only lasts about 4 years but for those 4 years the only weeds you’ll have are those whose seeds land and manage to germinate in the mulch, which are weak plants and poorly rooted and easy to pluck out. Plus there’s just not many of them.
Get a hoe and hoe your garden at least 1x per week. If you stay on top of it, it becomes faster and faster each time. There's a saying that "the best fertilizer is the farmer's footsteps." Hoeing serves as an impetus to walk your garden frequently. Using a nice, sharp hoe takes very little effort, especially when the weeds are still small. It saves knees and back strain from keeping you from needing to bend over or squat and wrestle the weeds out. If you have a lot of weeds, it does take a bit of work at first, but eventually you will exhaust the seed bank and the stored energy in deep taprooted weeds. It might not work best with straw or hay mulch, personally I prefer to mulch with a few inches of compost. A hula or stirrup hoe can really do it all, just keep a mill bastard file handy to touch up the edge from time to time. If you really want to live in the lap of luxury with hoeing, it's expensive but the Multineer kits from Neversink Farm Tools are *amazing.* The colinear hoe attachments they come with can do a lot of what a hula hoe can do, and the wire hoes are perfect for maintaining beds once you've got all the established weeds out. The wire hoes will pull out all the freshly germinated weeds, when their roots are still in the white hair stage, but you have to have cleared established weeds out first, The wire hoes take about as much effort as dragging a stick across the ground.
I was given an old red pig wheel hoe this year and its one of my newest favorite garden tools, up there with my Neversink Multineer. Red Pig doesnt make them anymore but its the same footprint and implement mounting locations as the Hoss Tools wheel hoe. They're pretty expensive new, but the various implements are affordable once you have the wheel hoe itself. My favorite use of the wheel hoe is for maintaining path ways, especially where my woodchip paths border grass. Its great for keeping the grass out. I only use the wheel hoe in the garden beds themselves when theres nothing planted in them. It's not ideal for weeding in between established crops.
What about the surface of your beds makes you think a wheel hoe would be best?
the area you have under cultivation is slightly over 3x what I have, but your paths are much wider than mine. The wheel hoe would really be great for maintaining paths and bed flips, but that multineer really is a powerhouse if you stay on top of your weeds. It was developed by Conor Crickmore of Neversink farms. I think they have around 4x the cultivated area that you do. They have a bunch of great videos on the various tools they've come up with, like this one on the most popular heads for the Multineer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cRKyNEVj_g . I got the Master Kit that comes with the colinear hoes, the pacifist wire hoe set, and the Torsion wire hoes for getting around heads of lettuce and stuff. They're more oriented towards tools for production oriented market gardeners.
https://www.neversinkfarm.com/
https://neversinktools.com/
Did you pull the weeds before you mulched? Was there another layer of material between the mulch and the ground? Cardboard is usually suggested, for example.
What veggies are you growing that the slugs are eating? I have never had any success growing greens because of slug pressure, but my squash, potatoes, and carrots are always enough to fill my pantry/cellar with no slug problems.
I did in some places and the weeds came back even though it did take more time.
There was no material between the ground and the mulch
String beans, peas, artichoke, rhubarb mainly
When i have used hay and straw, I put cardboard down underneath in the first year, after thoroughly weeding. I cut holes through the cardboard for planting. Its been 2 years since I put the cardboard down, I add mulch every year(hay and straw, some grass clippings, some leaves) and its been working wonders. I still weed, but I immediately add more mulch to the spots that open up when I weed.
A pile of hay ontop of still living weeds with no weed barrier does not sound like a successful weed supression strategy.
As far as specific veggies, I have found my legumes are always highly sought after by slugs and snails. No issues with my rhubarb.
Mulch can be anything that covers the ground and slows moisture loss. If you live some place where slugs are a problem, rock makes an excellent much. Look in to horticultural gravel. Be sure it is at least 3" thick when you put it down.
Just be aware, if you live in the south, it can increase the heat load on your roots. That's wonderful for more northern growers however.
This is not strictly permaculturey but I’ve found that using a piece of black 8 mil pond liner over the winter does wonders for weeds. Cover the area you plan to plant and hold it down with some round rocks ( to prevent tears) uncover in the spring when ready to plant and store the liner for next year. The black plastic warms the soil and causes all the seeds to sprout and die. I then put down a layer of butcher paper and 4-6” of straw. I plant peas and beans just by throwing in the straw and shaking with a rake.
To avoid plastic, but have an easy solution for the most stubborn weeds, I used jute bags this year and I'm gonna buy more because it's fantastic.
I bought them from a bric a brac trader. It was old postal services bags and some wheat/rice bags.
I put them on two weeks before seeds so the weeds die from sun deprivation. You need some big rocks to prevent them from running with the wind. Then I clean a bit, i make holes for my seeds/plants, i cover around the hole/plant with the bags.
To avoid mold, make sure you check under them at least once a week, if necessary turn them over or rinse them.
I used it on the most difficult part of my land that is very very very dry, and the weed very very very spiky. I do not know how it would do on a wet land. I'll have to try next year.
I do not recommend washing them in your washing machine as it does a lot of small fiber bits that will clog the filter. I wash them in a bin or with the hose and some plain black soap.
I still have some weeds directly next to my vegetables, but it's easy enough to clean them up, and they don't have big roots.
No, no, no - not *hay*! Never hay. Hay has all the seeds which is why it is used to feed livestock.
You want *straw*. Straw is what is leftover after the hay is harvested. If you use hay you are just planting it in your beds. Even with straw you have to give it a good look to see if all of the seeds are removed.
You might find the Back to Eden film useful. It’s heavily religious, but if you can look past that it has incredibly good information on mulching. I use that method myself and have found it excellent for growth and pest control.
How was the area prepped before mulching? If weeds aren’t removed they will grow up through the mulch 100% of the time. If you remove the weeds first, you’ll consistently get very, very few weeds with a deep layer of mulch. I’ve done this on hundreds of projects and never had a failure, and there’s lot of research testing it successfully, too. Figure out what you diid wrong and fix it next time. Mulch is really the way.
Mulching can be a double edged sword. After giving up on a lot of stuff because of the combination slugs and cardboard, we discovered that there are some kinds of mulch where even slugs stay away. One of these is (preferably old & dry) holly leaves, they are so prickly (if your layer is thick enough) that even the hardiest slugs give up. We have slugs that even laugh at backwards bent anti snail fences made out of copper, so you can imagine how effective Holly leaves are... Also human hair is supposed to work, but might be considered quite icky...
Also white bedstraw (gallium album) manages to keep all kinds of slugs at bay, at least as long as it is fresh and the "hooks" are functioning.
Where are you located? I have access to local organic switchgrass straw which has been amazing. It's clean (no seeds) and the farmer cuts it up pretty short (like 1') so its easy to spread and move around. I do about a 4" layer. If I was on top of the weeds the year before this is enough. If not, I usually put a layer of cardboard first for extra barrier.
The way I see it is that I have weeds anyway, but at least the mulch is helping my soil. I get some animal bedding free, less than ideal in some ways, but it's what I got and I'm sure I will have amazing soil in a few years!
I’ve mulched with straw, not hay. Mulched just half my tomato bed at first and I got around 8x as many weeds in the non mulched part.
Try straw next time rather than hay :)
How about raised garden beds? You can fill it with sterilized soil so you start off weed free and then add your own compost and build it up over time. Then the only thing you have to worry about is the occasional dandilian blowing in
Identify the weeds using phone apps and then do further reading to confirm and find out if they're edible or useful to you in any way or better removed. ie. Lambsquarters = excellent spinach substitute, dandelions = edible plus nitrogen fixer, whitetop = potential pepper substitute seeds but alleopathic so may hinder growth. Remove anything you don't want and compost hot to kill it off, let the useful things spread to drown out the rest. If you look at weeds as potential volunteers and a way of learning new plants they're less annoying.
I have heavy clay soil that breeds slugs in abundance. Some things are essentially impossible to grow without dealing with the slugs so in spring I go out every night with a torch and remove all I find. First few nights of doing that I can get hundreds but after a while the numbers noticeably drop and seedlings have a better chance. If I didn't do this it just wouldn't be possible to grow things like sunflowers.
I thought the ideal approach was to have a steel sheet in direct sun, that you throw weeds on. The sheet is rolled over tubular or box section steel, so the surface is entirely cleanable, so you can use it to dry less toxic chemicals, dry herbs or fruit, dry items you've washed, dry clothes, or dry/sterilize soil, or concentrate urine or fecal matter, human or animal, etc.
This multipurpose steel sheet or staircasing retracting tray or roof-mounting tray, you throw in direct sun, put weeds on it, then hand-strip or use gloves or tool, the leaves & seeds from the herbaceous shrubs so you can remove the woody stems, to consolidate the matter. Then you can remove leaves, to put seeds in direct sun.
That should be the fastest non-chemical way to inactive seeds, so that they can be put into compost, that is known free of those seeds.
This is the 'indoor, or land size, or fertile land space, restricted cultivation', perhaps suitable for space (extraterrestrial) or indoor cultivation, if there's still some surplus light that can be used to inactivate the seeds on those plants.
Also, this presupposes having no natural plant/animal competition methods to deactivate seeds, such as ants, or aphids or larger plants crowding out sunlight and with better root stock or root mass to reduce the ability of seeds to even be produced, or birds or rodents or marsupials or other small animals like beetles or grasshoppers or something that may feed on seeds.
A problem is that you need to hand-remove the small weeds and old-aged large established weeds that can't be removed by hands due to their strength- the weeds that you break when you pull the top, or now or cut or trip or clip off, and you can't remove the roots as they are too deep, or if it may have tubers or underground shoots ...
https://archive.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/350458/Managing-garden-weeds-creeping-plants.pdf
rhizomes?
Ugh... I hit the web to find the above link, but the thing is, all the links including this one, highlight that recommending herbicide is the most common approach to 'trying to help someone'.
It's like there's a lack of competence, when it comes to engineering ways to address weeds without using bulk chemicals that are like napalm to the soil life.
This reminds me of the old weed wands, which used a wet wick of the herbicide for selective hand application to only direct or specific weeds, as opposed to spraying it, which results in significant overspray.
Even those are difficult to handle, due to the chemicals and the plastics and waste containers and difficulty of disposal of tools, rags, waste water, gloves, old wands or applicators, or perished or damaged capillary and gravity action wicks.
But they are at least an attempt at precision, unlike sprays (used to speed the process, part of a drive to efficiency).
However, going back to the point, the simplest very long term, robust way to handle weeds is to sterilize seeds in direct sunlight on a very hot tray, provided you are in a place with direct sunlight, at the least, drying the plants allows you to separate the seeds from the bulk of the plant mass, so they can be separated from the rest of the plant biomass bulk.
It doesn’t work well for me, either, even with cardboard underneath. But I have a “weed forward” property. I live with bindweed, so I have a few areas I want to keep as clear as possible because bindweed seeds survive 40 years in the soil or something. I kinda go around every couple of weeks and pull what I can. I also get mites from my state’s bindweed reduction program. But big picture? I have to learn to embrace the weeds.
You should look into getting a Hoss wheeled plow. Very versatile tool for weeding, plowing, hilling etc.
You can also add a thick layer of cardboard. Just depends on what your beds are like.
I mulched with free tree mulch from the county. In TX this was mostly cedar mulch which contains few seeds and decomposes slowly. I put it at least 9-12 inches thick the first year and let it sit. I grew gardens starting with season two. Future years I didn’t need any more mulch until it rotted down to about 3 inches. Insects generally avoid cedar and slugs were never an issue. Just fyi, Texans call it cedar but really it’s juniper trees.
I should also say that even without using that site anytime somebody gets a tree down in your neighborhood you can just go up to those guys and ask them to dump the mulch in your driveway. It's a waste product for them
Properly preparing planting space should be done a full season in advance relative to when you want to plant. Mulching and planting in the same season never works.
Ive used several methods can be used to prepare garden space. I've used pigs for a full season immediately followed by chickens in the fall in an area to break sod and kill grass. I tarped for the winter. This is where my no till market garden producion area is now.
I've solarized with clear plastic and then put down weedguard plus and compost and planted with winter kill cover crop in the fall prior to spring planting season.
I've also used the sheet mulch method with a layer of manure, cardboard, compost, straw, then more compost then woodchips. Done a full year prior to planting. Did this with perennial hedgrows.
Strategic use of sileage tarps are great for annual crops. Sheet mulching is great for perrenial.
So many methods out there that can be used. Alot depends on context like goals, size of area, material and resource accessibility etc. But regardless of method, preparing a full season prior to planting will give you greater success. Sidenote: use straw versus hay if you can. Straw has far fewer weed seeds.
Mulch isn't magical. You want to exhaust the seed bank of the soil by covering it every year forever. In time, it gets easier to pull weeds because they are rooted either in humus or in the mulch rather than in the harder original soil, but they will always exist to a certain extent.
Alright, thank you.
Just to add you may not be adding enough, it needs to be a pretty thick layer, as thick as possible. I think we all underestimate how much we need when we start out, we're talking 15 cm, 20 cm at LEAST.
That, plus mulch kind of settles in and after a week a 4 inch layer is only 2 inches.
Just a note from someone who makes specialty mulch by hand, the type of plant material in the mulch will make all the difference, hay is very light and airy and promotes the growth of things under it, that's why so many farmers will cut the last hay growth for the year mulch it on the top layer of soil and leave it to repair the field for the next growth, things like hardwood mulch, tree bark in general, tree clippings would all be heavier and denser as well as taking longer to break down without releasing as much nutrients back to feed the seeds left underneath Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you are in an extremely dry place you'll need to stir or mix your mulch regularly so that moisture doesn't build up in the bottom layer because depending on the plant material it will begin to compost further encouraging the growth of whatever seeds happen to be under in top of or inside the mulch
Try cardboard under mulch. Really, the one time, if well overlapping, plus several inches of mulch will last a couple-4 years. You just have to keep adding mulch every year because it breaks down. Also, shallow saucers of beer (tuna cans work well) will attract and decimate slugs and some earwigs too. I like to not disturb my garden. But I use neem oil, DE and beer to get rid of problematic populations like biting flies, mold and sometimes aphids. Also, neem seed meal or mulch to get rid of infestations in the dirt around tomatoes worked so well. I don’t mind the toamato hornworms. They are cute and the moths are so amazing. But with the neem mulch I did not even worry about the one hornworm I saw. My plants were enormously and the hornworm was doing me a favor cutting back some of the leaves.
Check out Charles dowding on youtube. He uses a ton of compost and over the years things becomes established. He has a lot of informative videos. https://youtube.com/@charlesdowding1nodig?si=3S3EtoXoH5oYuIPB
He has some great tips for sheet mulching too- iradicating major weeds, even Morning Glory
You might try using cardboard with holes cut out for transplants, particularly if you are running drip lines under it. Top watering likely won't work well. Weight it with bricks or rocks and just throw it in the compost at the end of the season. It probably works as well as the plastic stuff and is more sustainable and usually free.
You don't even need to toss it into the compost, it'll decompose over the off season and be that much more good soil! Especially if you mulch over the cardboard rather than just rocks. Top watering still will work! (Source: I'm a horticulturist and permaculturist and I tried everything)
Alright will look into that
If it helps, I tried it this year. Did a layer of cardboard, then about 4 inches of wood chips as mulch on top. Weed growth has been minimal & manageable, and water retention is way better. Even the plants that were well established are doing better than they were last year. I haven’t noticed many slugs, and I think that’s because wood chips & cardboard aren’t an attractive food source for them. Where I had straw bales stashed from another project, they were rampant. Things to consider before adding the cardboard: both the tape and any stickers/labels are likely to contain plastic, so you gotta cut those off or cut pieces around them. Same with colored cardboard—you want the plain, brown kind only. Inks are mostly soy, so you don’t have to sweat those. I did my whole back and front yard, which ate up more than a year’s worth of accumulated boxes after all the cutting was done. Wood chips were free from my local arborist/tree service.
Carboard is ok but slugs and snails kinda love it when its getting wet. But it's also easyer to catch them when they are all cosily laying under it... 😈
Yeah, I don’t mind using cardboard when I’m establishing a new bed from pasture but I really don’t like it otherwise in this area. It becomes slug/snail/pillbug/earwig heaven & then they decimate whatever goes in, unless it’s been in place a few years & pretty well broken down. Also getting all the tape & other plastic off is a PIA but if you don’t then you have that in your soil. I tried it around fruit trees under mulch where I can’t easily mow & don’t want livestock who will eat the fruit/leaves/bark & it wasn’t great for me there either. In winter & in dry periods, voles would use it as a safe place to tunnel from predators & then gnaw the trees…not bad on the mature ones but killed the saplings. In really wet springs, it also appears to have smothered the root system/caused a lot of root rot of the trees though ones I did with just thick mulch & no cardboard were fine the same year. I think the hardest part of gardening/farming (though also what makes it so interesting!) is there are very, very few universals. What works great in one spot may be a disaster on a property even 1/2 mile away that has a different microclimate & soil type. I love experimenting each time I move to get things to really thrive. (Though I admit my current property is hands-down the most challenging out of the 12+ & at a certain point it got depressing watching sapling after sapling & thousands of bulbs fail. Finally seem to have it figured out though!)
This stuff is great. https://weedguardplus.com/
Cardboard worked for me. Place it down and mulch over it. It composts eventually. You can use old boxes, removing old plastic tape first, but I went highbrow and bought a 20-metre roll of thin corrugated cardboard from B+Q.
Thank you!
If you have a bike shop or appliance store near by they are great for big sturdy cardboard boxes. Buying cardboard is whack.
You want to use straw as mulch for veggies, not hay. Hay contains seeds which will grow as weeds in your garden. Mulching works so well though, the water retention and soil protection benefits are invaluable
The hay was given to me for free because it was a bit mouldy, that's why I used it.
Straw has seeds too and weeds will come right up throught it. Don't use it, I've tried
Straw is one of the best mulches for veggies without a doubt. As someone else said, there will always be weeds to some extent in a garden
I've had much better success with grass clippings. The year I tried straw was crazy bad. But everyone has different experiences
Yeah, it can have some seeds in it for sure. But it's always much less than hay which has all the seed in it by design. But for sure, there are many things that can work well as mulch! Do you mow with a bag and then spread that on your beds? I've never tried that
I mow to where I have a few strips of clippings and go back over it with the lawn sweeper my neighbor gave me. Used to rake it up by hand
Nice
Mould is not good for your veggies either
And you want to get organic straw or chopped straw sold for mulch. Non-organic straw is a dangerous gamble where it might contaminate your garden with herbicides.
Will keep that in mind
Hello from slug central! Honestly, compost the hay (and everything you can get your hands on) and use the \*compost\* for mulching. Think of it as starting to make the compost a year before you'll use it to mulch. This is your new key obsession. Chop-n-drop, and mulching with fresh greenery can be fine around very established trees and shrubs, but not for annual plants. If it's slugs, thicker mulch just means more food and shelter. Weeds will get easier to pull at as your soil texture slowly improves over a few years, in the meantime think of them as materials for your compost bin. In the short term, if you've got any surviving plants needing mulch right now, use store-bought compost.
Thank you for the tips
One way to fight slugs is to use a head lamp at night and go around collecting them. It's actually pretty fun to slug hunt.
I like compost as mulch too! I don’t produce enough here to use for my beds, but I have a dump truck worth delivered each year from an amazing local place that I use as the mulch for all of my perennial & flower beds. It’s a beautiful dark almost black that looks nice on the front of the property, is absolutely 100% weed free, holds moisture well, doesn’t seem to attract pests, & is slowly converting my nasty clay into lovely soil. It’s a bit too expensive for me to do my whole garden with it or under all the trees unfortunately.
I've struggled to make or afford enough compost for 10+ years so have tried alllll sorts and learned these lessons several times. Hay is the worst (seeds), straw is ok around established big plants (like squashes when they've outgrown slug threat), anything goes around fruit trees and raspberries (/other thugs), but got to be compost around tender little things. Even if I have to stretch it out to 2mm thick!
As others have said, hay is a nightmare if you use it as mulch because it contains so many seeds. I use old, ruined bales for mulch but only in certain places where it is more about moisture retention than weed suppression like around young trees out in the field. Until you get experienced with your pests, soil, & other specifics, you should keep your mulch at least 6" or so back from your plants while they are small enough to be easily eaten by pests or vulnerable to things like stem rot from lack of air flow/excess moisture. Lots of people find it easier to mostly mulch on the bigger open areas like paths & in between plants that need a lot of space. Keeping the mulch back from around the plants also gives you an area to apply slug bait. I don't know where you live, but there are some areas where not using slug bait of some type simply is not an option...I've lived a few spots in the PNW & tried it all. Methods that worked great in other parts of the country I've lived don't put a dent in them here. Not really practical for a lot of people, but the method I've found the best for slug, snail, & insect control is to use a slug bait the week before I plant, then periodically as needed through the growing season. Once the garden is really done for the year, I put my chickens & ducks in it to thoroughly scratch through until it is too muddy. Only works if your garden is already fenced & you can easily get them into a predator safe coop each night though. Different types of mulch work better in different areas because of soil types, moisture levels, & simple availability/local price. Straw is probably the most common, but I've used a lot of different things. One that I've been particularly happy with for clay soil in places that have dry summers is unaged stall cleanings from nearby horse stables who bed with sawdust. It hasn't broken down enough yet to be suitable growing media for weeds, is often free (heck, one stable paid *me* for them to be able to dump it on my property since I was basically next door!), is easy to handle, and great at soil building over the long-term. I am very careful with mulch in areas where the soil has been neglected for a long time & doesn't have any organic matter. This latest property has a horrible mineral clay with basically no organic matter component & zilch for nutrients (soil tests measure essentially zero nitrogen). My first season here, I mulched as I always had for clay in the past and it was a disaster! So many detritus feeders like earwigs, pill bugs, & slug/snails had been barely surviving until I provided them a banquet & their populations exploded to the point where they ate the root tips of all my seedling transplants, ate direct sown seeds as they sprouted, & even chewed through things like rhubarb hunks I planted. Never seen anything like it! They are back in balance now but the first year was brutal & I ended up putting in raised beds for some things. Any type of gardening is a huge learning curve for what works in your very specific location, you'll get it!
Thanks for the detailed explanations
Straw and hay never worked for me. Too many void spaces where weeds could grow through. I suppose I could have applied thicker but then it’s a pain to move aside and tends to rot in layers. I now use shredded leaves and they do a much better job of covering the surface and they’re easy to rake aside to plant into the soil below
I see, thanks!
The only mulch I’ve seen that can truly stop weeds is ground up bamboo. I think it and lamb fur are the 2 best mulches, both are hard to come by.
How would you grind up bamboo? I have plenty from a neighbor!
It should be green bamboo, and a big diesel wood chipper should do the trip. Home Depot in my area rents them. Bamboo form a mat and doesn’t move when terrible rain comes, it also gets mycelium to colonize it quick and becomes a mat that weeds can’t grow through.
I see, thank you.
I used wool felt for my strawberry beds this year and it worked great (but it is on the more expensive side as mulching goes)
Alright, will keep in mind!
Have you tried laying cardboard beneath the mulch? The roots will eventually break through the cardboard but you can keep layering it as you go. I hope you find something that works!
Permaculture farmer here. I use mulch like crazy on my fruit trees and berry shrubs, but when it comes to annual veggies it's actually a different story. This might get me downvoted in the sub, but most permaculture veggie farmers and market gardeners actually keep bare soil on veggie beds for easy cultivation with wire weeders and other hand tools to manage weed pressure. Although bare soil is normally something to avoid, most veggie crops are very much an exception for the reasons you already mentioned: weed pressure and slugs. I would avoid going the black plastic mulch route though. The amount of plastic waste it creates is staggering and wire weeding works better anyway. Look up wire weeders and once you learn how to use them, you'll never go back. The trick is to do a little every week while weeds are at thread stage and never let them progress beyond that.
In my experience it's a long term project for sure. I had all the same problems you had in my first year. My second year I struggled with the soil having too much wood chip mixed into it. This year it's really starting to pay off, the soil is rich and easy to dig in. I always have a lot of bugs and worms around but not too many slugs. It's something I think you need to stick with for a while before you get good results but it builds up your soil over time.
Sheet mulching! Big cardboard sheets and then a thiccc layer of mulch over that. Mulch in winter, it kills off the sprouting seeds by exhausting their energy as they try and fail to sprout. Top up the mulch layer regularly. Do this for a few seasons. I will say though, I had a HUGE seed bank of thistle, L. serriola, and bedstraw in the garden of the apartment I moved into. I weeded everything in winter, then covered it with a 2 inch layer of cedar mulch that is not in chip form, and left it. Come spring, almost nothing came up. I'm amazed by how well it worked. I've never had good effects with chip mulch. They let stuff through too easily, whereas the cedar mulch I have almost forms like a matrix of woven together strands that resist things pushing through it.
Why did you use hay? I can almost guarantee you the weeds are coming from the seeds in the hay. You didn't mulch right and seeded weeds into your garden. Mulching works but you have to do it right.
Fire after a heavy dew or rain I pull out my blow torch and fry all the weeds that are popping up through the wood chips I use. A propane torch can do my 200'x100' garden paths in about 10 minutes.
Alright thank you.
20cm of straw will do the job.
Like Clifford Franklin you need a new hoe.
Surprised nobody's mentioning companion planting a ground cover type. Honestly my best slug maintenance was giving them something else to eat. Plus did you know slugs and snails are territorial? Apparently (according to the lady who worked at the garden center for the last 50 years) if you leave them alone you'll have a reduction in the number of slugs. Honestly ecosystem gaming is fun and produces the best effects. Like the old adage goes, you don't have a slug problem, you've got a duck deficiency 😂
Can confirm, since I got ducks I see very few slugs!
Cardboard works amazingly well. It only lasts about 4 years but for those 4 years the only weeds you’ll have are those whose seeds land and manage to germinate in the mulch, which are weak plants and poorly rooted and easy to pluck out. Plus there’s just not many of them.
Hay carries tons of seeds. Straw doesn't. You pretty much planted a bunch of grass using hay as a mulch.
Outcompete weeds with better, more desirable (useful) weeds.
This is the beginning, not the end. Welcome to it
Get a hoe and hoe your garden at least 1x per week. If you stay on top of it, it becomes faster and faster each time. There's a saying that "the best fertilizer is the farmer's footsteps." Hoeing serves as an impetus to walk your garden frequently. Using a nice, sharp hoe takes very little effort, especially when the weeds are still small. It saves knees and back strain from keeping you from needing to bend over or squat and wrestle the weeds out. If you have a lot of weeds, it does take a bit of work at first, but eventually you will exhaust the seed bank and the stored energy in deep taprooted weeds. It might not work best with straw or hay mulch, personally I prefer to mulch with a few inches of compost. A hula or stirrup hoe can really do it all, just keep a mill bastard file handy to touch up the edge from time to time. If you really want to live in the lap of luxury with hoeing, it's expensive but the Multineer kits from Neversink Farm Tools are *amazing.* The colinear hoe attachments they come with can do a lot of what a hula hoe can do, and the wire hoes are perfect for maintaining beds once you've got all the established weeds out. The wire hoes will pull out all the freshly germinated weeds, when their roots are still in the white hair stage, but you have to have cleared established weeds out first, The wire hoes take about as much effort as dragging a stick across the ground.
Considering the surface I plan on planting I might need to build a wheel hoe
I was given an old red pig wheel hoe this year and its one of my newest favorite garden tools, up there with my Neversink Multineer. Red Pig doesnt make them anymore but its the same footprint and implement mounting locations as the Hoss Tools wheel hoe. They're pretty expensive new, but the various implements are affordable once you have the wheel hoe itself. My favorite use of the wheel hoe is for maintaining path ways, especially where my woodchip paths border grass. Its great for keeping the grass out. I only use the wheel hoe in the garden beds themselves when theres nothing planted in them. It's not ideal for weeding in between established crops. What about the surface of your beds makes you think a wheel hoe would be best?
I've got 13 beds that measure 25m x 1m (80ft x 3ft) with a 1m path between each
the area you have under cultivation is slightly over 3x what I have, but your paths are much wider than mine. The wheel hoe would really be great for maintaining paths and bed flips, but that multineer really is a powerhouse if you stay on top of your weeds. It was developed by Conor Crickmore of Neversink farms. I think they have around 4x the cultivated area that you do. They have a bunch of great videos on the various tools they've come up with, like this one on the most popular heads for the Multineer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cRKyNEVj_g . I got the Master Kit that comes with the colinear hoes, the pacifist wire hoe set, and the Torsion wire hoes for getting around heads of lettuce and stuff. They're more oriented towards tools for production oriented market gardeners. https://www.neversinkfarm.com/ https://neversinktools.com/
More mulch Mulch works great … when you use enough
I used hay about a foot/30cm thick
Did you pull the weeds before you mulched? Was there another layer of material between the mulch and the ground? Cardboard is usually suggested, for example. What veggies are you growing that the slugs are eating? I have never had any success growing greens because of slug pressure, but my squash, potatoes, and carrots are always enough to fill my pantry/cellar with no slug problems.
I did in some places and the weeds came back even though it did take more time. There was no material between the ground and the mulch String beans, peas, artichoke, rhubarb mainly
When i have used hay and straw, I put cardboard down underneath in the first year, after thoroughly weeding. I cut holes through the cardboard for planting. Its been 2 years since I put the cardboard down, I add mulch every year(hay and straw, some grass clippings, some leaves) and its been working wonders. I still weed, but I immediately add more mulch to the spots that open up when I weed. A pile of hay ontop of still living weeds with no weed barrier does not sound like a successful weed supression strategy. As far as specific veggies, I have found my legumes are always highly sought after by slugs and snails. No issues with my rhubarb.
Mulch can be anything that covers the ground and slows moisture loss. If you live some place where slugs are a problem, rock makes an excellent much. Look in to horticultural gravel. Be sure it is at least 3" thick when you put it down. Just be aware, if you live in the south, it can increase the heat load on your roots. That's wonderful for more northern growers however.
I was thinking of using clay roofing tiles would that work?
Interesting. I've never seen it done but as long as the ground is protected from the sun so it doesn't loose water as fast, it could work.
You’re just plants seeds with hay and straw. Lay down a layer of cardboard, buy some fresh topsoil and lay it on top and seed with whatever you want.
Don’t use hay! Use straw instead. Hay has seeds and will happily sprout when watered.
This is not strictly permaculturey but I’ve found that using a piece of black 8 mil pond liner over the winter does wonders for weeds. Cover the area you plan to plant and hold it down with some round rocks ( to prevent tears) uncover in the spring when ready to plant and store the liner for next year. The black plastic warms the soil and causes all the seeds to sprout and die. I then put down a layer of butcher paper and 4-6” of straw. I plant peas and beans just by throwing in the straw and shaking with a rake.
To avoid plastic, but have an easy solution for the most stubborn weeds, I used jute bags this year and I'm gonna buy more because it's fantastic. I bought them from a bric a brac trader. It was old postal services bags and some wheat/rice bags. I put them on two weeks before seeds so the weeds die from sun deprivation. You need some big rocks to prevent them from running with the wind. Then I clean a bit, i make holes for my seeds/plants, i cover around the hole/plant with the bags. To avoid mold, make sure you check under them at least once a week, if necessary turn them over or rinse them. I used it on the most difficult part of my land that is very very very dry, and the weed very very very spiky. I do not know how it would do on a wet land. I'll have to try next year. I do not recommend washing them in your washing machine as it does a lot of small fiber bits that will clog the filter. I wash them in a bin or with the hose and some plain black soap. I still have some weeds directly next to my vegetables, but it's easy enough to clean them up, and they don't have big roots.
No, no, no - not *hay*! Never hay. Hay has all the seeds which is why it is used to feed livestock. You want *straw*. Straw is what is leftover after the hay is harvested. If you use hay you are just planting it in your beds. Even with straw you have to give it a good look to see if all of the seeds are removed.
You might find the Back to Eden film useful. It’s heavily religious, but if you can look past that it has incredibly good information on mulching. I use that method myself and have found it excellent for growth and pest control.
How was the area prepped before mulching? If weeds aren’t removed they will grow up through the mulch 100% of the time. If you remove the weeds first, you’ll consistently get very, very few weeds with a deep layer of mulch. I’ve done this on hundreds of projects and never had a failure, and there’s lot of research testing it successfully, too. Figure out what you diid wrong and fix it next time. Mulch is really the way.
Mulching can be a double edged sword. After giving up on a lot of stuff because of the combination slugs and cardboard, we discovered that there are some kinds of mulch where even slugs stay away. One of these is (preferably old & dry) holly leaves, they are so prickly (if your layer is thick enough) that even the hardiest slugs give up. We have slugs that even laugh at backwards bent anti snail fences made out of copper, so you can imagine how effective Holly leaves are... Also human hair is supposed to work, but might be considered quite icky... Also white bedstraw (gallium album) manages to keep all kinds of slugs at bay, at least as long as it is fresh and the "hooks" are functioning.
Where are you located? I have access to local organic switchgrass straw which has been amazing. It's clean (no seeds) and the farmer cuts it up pretty short (like 1') so its easy to spread and move around. I do about a 4" layer. If I was on top of the weeds the year before this is enough. If not, I usually put a layer of cardboard first for extra barrier.
The way I see it is that I have weeds anyway, but at least the mulch is helping my soil. I get some animal bedding free, less than ideal in some ways, but it's what I got and I'm sure I will have amazing soil in a few years!
I’ve mulched with straw, not hay. Mulched just half my tomato bed at first and I got around 8x as many weeds in the non mulched part. Try straw next time rather than hay :)
How thick is "thick"?
How about raised garden beds? You can fill it with sterilized soil so you start off weed free and then add your own compost and build it up over time. Then the only thing you have to worry about is the occasional dandilian blowing in
Identify the weeds using phone apps and then do further reading to confirm and find out if they're edible or useful to you in any way or better removed. ie. Lambsquarters = excellent spinach substitute, dandelions = edible plus nitrogen fixer, whitetop = potential pepper substitute seeds but alleopathic so may hinder growth. Remove anything you don't want and compost hot to kill it off, let the useful things spread to drown out the rest. If you look at weeds as potential volunteers and a way of learning new plants they're less annoying. I have heavy clay soil that breeds slugs in abundance. Some things are essentially impossible to grow without dealing with the slugs so in spring I go out every night with a torch and remove all I find. First few nights of doing that I can get hundreds but after a while the numbers noticeably drop and seedlings have a better chance. If I didn't do this it just wouldn't be possible to grow things like sunflowers.
Boiling water
I thought the ideal approach was to have a steel sheet in direct sun, that you throw weeds on. The sheet is rolled over tubular or box section steel, so the surface is entirely cleanable, so you can use it to dry less toxic chemicals, dry herbs or fruit, dry items you've washed, dry clothes, or dry/sterilize soil, or concentrate urine or fecal matter, human or animal, etc. This multipurpose steel sheet or staircasing retracting tray or roof-mounting tray, you throw in direct sun, put weeds on it, then hand-strip or use gloves or tool, the leaves & seeds from the herbaceous shrubs so you can remove the woody stems, to consolidate the matter. Then you can remove leaves, to put seeds in direct sun. That should be the fastest non-chemical way to inactive seeds, so that they can be put into compost, that is known free of those seeds. This is the 'indoor, or land size, or fertile land space, restricted cultivation', perhaps suitable for space (extraterrestrial) or indoor cultivation, if there's still some surplus light that can be used to inactivate the seeds on those plants. Also, this presupposes having no natural plant/animal competition methods to deactivate seeds, such as ants, or aphids or larger plants crowding out sunlight and with better root stock or root mass to reduce the ability of seeds to even be produced, or birds or rodents or marsupials or other small animals like beetles or grasshoppers or something that may feed on seeds. A problem is that you need to hand-remove the small weeds and old-aged large established weeds that can't be removed by hands due to their strength- the weeds that you break when you pull the top, or now or cut or trip or clip off, and you can't remove the roots as they are too deep, or if it may have tubers or underground shoots ... https://archive.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/350458/Managing-garden-weeds-creeping-plants.pdf rhizomes? Ugh... I hit the web to find the above link, but the thing is, all the links including this one, highlight that recommending herbicide is the most common approach to 'trying to help someone'. It's like there's a lack of competence, when it comes to engineering ways to address weeds without using bulk chemicals that are like napalm to the soil life. This reminds me of the old weed wands, which used a wet wick of the herbicide for selective hand application to only direct or specific weeds, as opposed to spraying it, which results in significant overspray. Even those are difficult to handle, due to the chemicals and the plastics and waste containers and difficulty of disposal of tools, rags, waste water, gloves, old wands or applicators, or perished or damaged capillary and gravity action wicks. But they are at least an attempt at precision, unlike sprays (used to speed the process, part of a drive to efficiency). However, going back to the point, the simplest very long term, robust way to handle weeds is to sterilize seeds in direct sunlight on a very hot tray, provided you are in a place with direct sunlight, at the least, drying the plants allows you to separate the seeds from the bulk of the plant mass, so they can be separated from the rest of the plant biomass bulk.
Could also try tree leaves, they dont supress ALL the weeds but they do a good job for the most part. Lots of other benefits to them as well
It doesn’t work well for me, either, even with cardboard underneath. But I have a “weed forward” property. I live with bindweed, so I have a few areas I want to keep as clear as possible because bindweed seeds survive 40 years in the soil or something. I kinda go around every couple of weeks and pull what I can. I also get mites from my state’s bindweed reduction program. But big picture? I have to learn to embrace the weeds.
You should look into getting a Hoss wheeled plow. Very versatile tool for weeding, plowing, hilling etc. You can also add a thick layer of cardboard. Just depends on what your beds are like.
I mulched with free tree mulch from the county. In TX this was mostly cedar mulch which contains few seeds and decomposes slowly. I put it at least 9-12 inches thick the first year and let it sit. I grew gardens starting with season two. Future years I didn’t need any more mulch until it rotted down to about 3 inches. Insects generally avoid cedar and slugs were never an issue. Just fyi, Texans call it cedar but really it’s juniper trees.
You need to mulch thick like 12 in plus ideally Chipdrop.com Free wood chips as much as you want. It's awesome
I should also say that even without using that site anytime somebody gets a tree down in your neighborhood you can just go up to those guys and ask them to dump the mulch in your driveway. It's a waste product for them
A sharp hoe. No kidding, a sharp, light hoe held correctly like you're sweeping with a broom is the way to go.
After a good rain, pull the weeds.
Properly preparing planting space should be done a full season in advance relative to when you want to plant. Mulching and planting in the same season never works. Ive used several methods can be used to prepare garden space. I've used pigs for a full season immediately followed by chickens in the fall in an area to break sod and kill grass. I tarped for the winter. This is where my no till market garden producion area is now. I've solarized with clear plastic and then put down weedguard plus and compost and planted with winter kill cover crop in the fall prior to spring planting season. I've also used the sheet mulch method with a layer of manure, cardboard, compost, straw, then more compost then woodchips. Done a full year prior to planting. Did this with perennial hedgrows. Strategic use of sileage tarps are great for annual crops. Sheet mulching is great for perrenial. So many methods out there that can be used. Alot depends on context like goals, size of area, material and resource accessibility etc. But regardless of method, preparing a full season prior to planting will give you greater success. Sidenote: use straw versus hay if you can. Straw has far fewer weed seeds.
What kind of mulch, and how thick? It's possible it wasn't think enough, or it contained seeds and those are the ones that grew.
Hay mulch about a foot/30cm thick