A Clear Pathway

When I first started work on my veggie garden this spring, I was pretty disheartened about the weeds in the pathways.  There were weeds all around the perimeter as well, and I was frankly tired of trimming and pulling weeds all summer.

Before

We had put newspaper and grass clippings on some of the pathways, but that had to be re-done every year, since the newspaper degraded and things got muddy.

So, this year things would be different.  Fernando had given me enough of a garden budget that I could afford some landscape fabric to cover the pathways, and mulch to put on top of the landscape fabric.

When I went to Lowe's to purchase mulch, I saw several bags of mulch inside clear plastic bags.  A store associate explained that the clear plastic was a recovery bag, which was used when the original bag had holes or had burst open.  They couldn't sell the bags of mulch full price, even though most or all of the mulch was still in the bags.  So, they were marked down half price.  Plus, the mulch was on sale, half price, that weekend!

These (above) are the first 19 bags of mulch.  Since then, I bought 11, then 10, more bags.  And those 40 bags of mulch were all used to cover all those walkways.

Fernando helped me with the inside pathways.

First, we cut the fabric to cover the width of each pathway.  We gave it an extra 3-4" on each side, to tuck in the fabric where it met the wood of the sides of the raised bed.  We used putty knives to tuck in the fabric.  And I actually found a better tool--my Pampered Chef server.  It's already pretty beat up, and it worked like a charm pushing the fabric down and under/in along the sides of the beds.

We used landscape staples to tack down the fabric.  They simply punch into the fabric.  We used a rubber mallet to push them deep into the ground and secure the fabric.

Landscape staples.

You can see one completed row of fabric below.

Now, in pictures, the pathways get covered and things start looking really pretty.

Thomas and Danny joined in one day to help.

More fabric down, more mulch on top.

After

Here are the images I took of the completed project.  Most of the mulch I bought was red mulch, but you can see some brown and black thrown in there like patchwork.

A patchwork path along the fence.

Done!  No more weeds, no more mud.  It's tolerable to walk on barefoot.  And, it's so neat and organized!  I'm so tickled with myself.  :)


Back to life,
Christine

Visit my photography blog
Visit my photography website