Asked on Mar 25, 2014

Food safe landscape fabric for veggie garden

Joan
by Joan
I'm looking for a food safe landscape fabric or other material to keep down weeds in my
organic vegetable garden. Do you know of any product or material I can use?
  8 answers
  • Leslie C. Leslie C. on Mar 25, 2014
    Newspaper!
  • Douglas Hunt Douglas Hunt on Mar 26, 2014
    I love Leslie's suggestion.
  • Renee Hansen Renee Hansen on Mar 26, 2014
    cardboard
  • Jennifer G Jennifer G on Mar 26, 2014
    Depending on how big your garden is… My mom used unbleached Muslin by the yard in her narrow garden. She would cut a slice in the fabric where she planted her crops. It was the perfect width, had great drainage and kept the weeds down all season. During the winter months it would rot and she turned it into the soil come spring and started all over.
  • Fran Barrett Fran Barrett on Mar 26, 2014
    Newspaper!
  • RayRay RayRay on Mar 26, 2014
    Won't news papers have the ink die leaking on to everything?
  • Joan Joan on Mar 26, 2014
    I was wondering about the ink too.
  • Jeanette S Jeanette S on Mar 27, 2014
    The ink in newspaper ink today is soybean oil, not petroleum as in the past. However, other chemicals are added which make it not completely biodegradable...to what extend I do not know. However, there is probably not much of anything that does not contain some objectionable byproduct. Cardboard is pine trees using corn starch glue. Kraft paper is a good product because it is just pine trees. Cardboard and Kraft paper could prove to be rather acidic however requiring some lime to be added to the soil.