This Garden Path Lets You Leave Your Hoe in the Garden Shed

About 15 years ago, when I started a small organic market garden specializing in salad greens, I discovered an easy way to control the weeds in my garden paths. The method also gives you a ready supply of high-value mulch. Quite simply, you cover your garden paths with New Zealand white clover. The clover will grow about 8 inches high, but you can mow it to keep it shorter. The clover keeps out most weeds, so you won't need to work so hard.

The trick to making the system work is to prepare a seedbed in the garden path early in springtime, when natural rainfall will give the seeds the moisture they need to germinate. After the clover has become established, it is quite drought-tolerant. Plants growing near the clover in the garden beds will benefit from nitrogen that is harvested from the air by specialized bacteria that live in partnership with the roots of the clover. Other plants also appear to become more drought-tolerant by being placed close to the clover, but I have not yet found an explanation for this phenomenon. (This is the reason I always over-seed my lawn grass with clover - the lawn, including the grass, will stay green with less water.)

The clover blossoms bring in bees from all around, which can then also pollinate your squash and other vegetable plants. When the clover is established, it can tolerate foot traffic, and can mow it or chopped down with a weed eater if it gets too high. If you use a grass-catcher with your lawn mower when you cut the clover, you can then use the hay as a high-nitrogen mulch for heavy-feeding vegetable plants.

Since I understand the value of this method, it seems inexcusable that my current garden has weeds growing in the paths instead of clover. The garden is growing on gravely soil that was previously used for parking cars. Weed seeds have been accumulating in the soil for years, and digging the soil this spring caused a flush of unwanted weedy growth. When I hand-dug the garden beds, I cleared the weeds already growing in the paths, but I didn't get my garden ready early enough to plant the clover. Now I have weeds. If you find yourself in the same situation, here is how I'm fixing it.

First, I'm cutting all the weeds at ground level with a hoe, or a shovel held flat so the blade is horizontal. The shovel can cut through larger weeds that are sometimes difficult to take out with a hoe, unless you're a true expert at sharpening and using one. If perennial weeds, like buttonweed, are growing in the paths, it can help to pull them out before removing the tops of the annual weeds.

If you even suspect that any of the weeds have set seeds already, especially the more noxious ones, don't put them in your compost pile. I know people say that the heat of a compost pile can kill weed seeds, but I've never known anyone who actually built a pile that got hot enough. There are certain weeds in my neighborhood with seeds so sharp and dangerous underfoot that I treat the plants almost as carefully as hazardous waste.

Once the paths are cleaned off, I put down heavy cardboard, overlapping the edges by at least six inches or more. I have lots of cardboard left over from my moving boxes. If you don't have any, you might be able to get some from your local recycling center. Newspapers might work, if you lay them on thickly enough.

If you have a ready water source and you can keep the paths moist for several weeks, you can add several inches of weed-free compost on top of the cardboard, and then add clover seeds. Rake them in gently, and keep them watered. You will not be able to use your paths until the clover is established, so I suggest you wait and plant your clover in the fall, as I'll be doing.

Since I am not ready to plant the clover yet, I covered my cardboard with a heavy mulch of straw to keep it from blowing away. If keeping out weeds was my only concern, I could stop now, and not bother with the clover. However, I like having the ready supply of high-nitrogen mulch that I get when I cut my clover paths, and I want the blossoms to entice bees into my garden. I'll remove the straw this fall, after most of my summer veggies have been harvested, cover the cardboard with weed-free compost, and then sow my clover seeds. The fall rains should provide plenty of moisture for the seeds, and if I plant soon enough, the clover roots will be well-established before the first freeze. The roots will go down through the wet cardboard, and next year I'll have the beautiful, clover-filled paths that worked so well for me in the past. Since the soil in the paths never need to be disturbed again, there should be very few weeds that try to compete with the well-established clover.