Allen Carlson

I currently have a request pending on chipdrop.com. 4 months and no answers 😐

I've been looking into different mulches to use for pathays, and so far it seems like straw is way cheaper than woodchips. Is there any major drawback to using straw as a mulch for pathways? I know most people only use it in their actual beds themselves

I fish -- not often and not well -- but I always eat what I catch (unless I only catch one microscopic little panfish. Then I just throw it back)

Last fall I planted a bunch of willow cuttings. Only one of them ended up rooting. I transplanted it a few months ago, and it started showing symptoms of transplant shock, so I moved it into a shady spot, where it seemingly recovered.

I haven't measured or anything, but where it is now gets probably fewer than 4 hours of sun right now. I'm a bit worried for it because it looks like it's starting to get a bit leggy, but I don't know if moving it to a sunnier spot would shock it worse.

The most problematic weeds are wild lettuce (lactuca), pigweed (amaranthus) and something which is I think is skeletonweed (chondrilla juncea), as well as crabgrass. I had mulch down before, but they seemed to grow through it without a problem, especially the wild lettuce and the crabgrass.

I've recently realized my garden just wasn't working for me. It's overrun with weeds, the soil is terrible, and  the paths and beds aren't straight. It's like a maze: impossible to irrigate and hardly growing anything.

I decided to level it and start over. I just finished clearing out all of the big rocks, and now I'm cleaning up the old woodchips and ripping up the old landscape paper (which the weeds had grown through).

Any advice? Am I doing it wrong? What should my next steps be?

I was thinking I could mow the weeds down and then cover with new (better quality) landscape paper.

I think a mesh would be the easiest and cheapest way to do it, but would it hold in heavy snow?

I live in a big wheat-growing area, and the starling population is always pretty high. They've started to raid my coop as an easy source of food.

When they did this in the past, I put some cds in the coop. It only worked for like a week. Should I try again? I was thinking maybe I could add a bird feeder to the outside of my garden shed (right next to the coop) to distract them. Is this a bad idea?

Any advice is appreciated, because I am at a loss.

We have had a wet spring where I live, and everything in my garden is really tall right now, including the weeds. I've read a little bit about permaculture, and I know having some weeds in your garden can be beneficial. If my main goal of gardening is to grow food crops (mostly beans and potatoes), how should I find the right balance between pulling weeds and leaving them?

Thank you all for your responses. I think I'll just mulch around them and hope for the best