Our vegetable patch is 2 winter's old. We went for the 1.2 metre wide beds (a la Joy Larcomb) but lack of funds meant that the basketweave paths were put on the backburner. And so we cut out 5 or 6 beds with paths dividing them and instead of the brick , grass paths. Great except we had given ourselves unwanted mowing and edging work.
One season on, we decided that we would make the patch into one big bed, edged in timber. An awful lot of extra digging beckoned. Just in time I ran into Dan the herbalist, down at the local community garden. "Cardboard" he pronounced "is the answer". That day, I returned home and laid it down thick on the grass paths (all close mown at the time). And so last summer we had cardboard paths. They had a certain charm.
Today has been the inaugural one for making that large bed. The cardboard has pretty much rotted away. The grass which lay beneath my boxes for flat-pack Ikea furniture etc is almost weed-free and has an excellent friable crumb structure. 10 out of 10 for this labour saving trick.
Our vegetable patch is 2 winter's old. We went for the 1.2 metre wide beds (a la Joy Larcomb) but lack of funds meant that the basketweave paths were put on the backburner. And so we cut out 5 or 6 beds with paths dividing them and instead of the brick , grass paths. Great except we had given ourselves unwanted mowing and edging work.
One season on, we decided that we would make the patch into one big bed, edged in timber. An awful lot of extra digging beckoned. Just in time I ran into Dan the herbalist, down at the local community garden. "Cardboard" he pronounced "is the answer". That day, I returned home and laid it down thick on the grass paths (all close mown at the time). And so last summer we had cardboard paths. They had a certain charm.
Today has been the inaugural one for making that large bed. The cardboard has pretty much rotted away. The grass which lay beneath my boxes for flat-pack Ikea furniture etc is almost weed-free and has an excellent friable crumb structure. 10 out of 10 for this labour saving trick. 
