Strategy for mulching and weed prevention

The deal with mulch if you are using the hardwood or cypress is it loses its color looks bad in 9 months, bad product although everybody uses it. Cypress is also environmentally heinous because they trash the cypress bogs and swamps down South to get it. At Blue River Nursery we use medium grade pine bark mulch 2-3″ at the most deep. Pine bark is acidic and will keep a certain amount of weeds from coming up based on that fact alone. The mulch itself will last 3-4-5 years. You never replace it. You just put a thin layer over the top every couple years. You should be able to scuff the top of the mulch with a steel rake every spring and get real close to the new look with no money invested. Put down newsprint for weed fabric 5 sheets thick under the pine bark. The pine bark will actually amend your soil, the newsprint will break down and do the same thing. However, the newsprint will shut down all the weed seeds that are there right now. You always have to deal with weeds. Weeds always grow no matter what. For this purpose you can mix up Roundup in a small bucket. Tape a paint brush to a stick and go around and dab the weeds with Roundup. This way you do not risk the herbicide drifting in the air onto your plants. Do it when they are small and they die to the ground and you never notice them. Wait until they are big and you will be left with big brown things when they die and have to pull them. Another strategy for combating weeds is to size the shrubbery or perennials appropriately with the size of the garden. If you get the proximity of the plants right this keeps the sun from warming the ground and keeps a certain amount of weed seeds from germinating. Proximity and proportion generally need regular tweeking. However, shopping for plants and planting them always sounds like more fun than pulling weeds.