If you’re like most gardeners, you may have gotten a little lax with the weeding when September came. But keep in mind that the fall garden is fertile ground for weeds this time of year. And that is for several reasons. First is laziness. It’s the “I just want to be done with it” mentality. You spend less and less time with garden maintenance. This feeling hits everyone, so don’t feel guilty about it. The second reason weeds get a foothold in the fall garden is because crops that covered the ground—tomatoes, zucchini and so forth—are either waning or you’ve already ripped them out of the ground. The place where I ripped out a sprawling zucchini is now home to a carpet of weeds. But the first step to a low-weed spring garden is best taken in fall. It’s as easy as reaching for your brown paper yard waste bags.

Stamping Out Next Spring’s Emerging Weeds

Nothing fancy here, really. You can use the brown paper yard waste bags that you find in home improvement and hardware stores, garden centers and even supermarkets. And I don’t mean to use them to place the weeds into! Nope, this option is much easier, especially for small garden spaces or for weed control along the garden’s walkways.

Just unfold the bags so they are long and flat. Then, simply place the bags onto the space you want to rid of weeds. You can put them either on the garden bed itself or the path. To keep the bags from blowing or moving, you can wet the bags down or thrown a thin layer of garden soil on top of the bags. In my case, I’m placing my wooden garden pavers on top. With the aid of rain, snow and earthworms, those brown paper bags eventually break down but first do the job of killing present weeds. They then form a barrier that prevents weed seeds from breaking through.

You will likely have to place additional yard waste bags down in mid spring. However, placing this weed barrier down now will help control the emergence of weed seedlings on those few days of warm weather in January or February. No one wants to step into the garden for the first time in spring and see the weeds arrived a full month before you did.