If there is one chore in the garden that causes me stress, it is weeding.  Not the day-to-day weeding, but when the weeds get out of control! In every garden I’ve ever had, at some point throughout the growing season, the weeds got ahead of me.  So when it came to my dream garden, I was determined to do whatever it took to minimize the weeds.

One weapon in my weed control arsenal was placing the garden in a location where it would get plenty of traffic.  I walk through my garden 4-10 times a day as I go back and forth from the house to the soaproom.  During almost every one of those passes, I do a little bit of weeding.

Taking a “small bite” at a time keeps the weeding very manageable.

And then usually once a week or so (depending on how often it is needed), we all go out as a family and weed together for about an hour.  With all ten of us working, the weeds don’t stand a chance.

So the weeding in the garden beds are usually well taken care of.  But in the past, it has always been the weeds in the aisles that tend to take over my garden.

Over the past twenty years of gardening, I think I have used everything (short of chemical weed killers) to keep the weeds under control in the aisles. I have used plastic, mulch, cardboard, shingles, tarps, wood, bricks, fabric.  You name it, I’ve tried it.  Eventually, the weeds always win – as you can see in my heavily mulched herb garden at the old house.

With my dream garden, I was determined to win the battle once and for all.  Concrete was my solution.  All of the aisles within and around the garden are covered in concrete.

As of yet, not a single aisle weed in sight!