Less garden work equals more time at the beach

I love gardening and it really doesn't seem like work to me. Still...my boys prefer that I don't spend all my time puttering in the garden in Summer, so I like to look for methods to prevent weeds. Over the last couple of years I have become a big fan of mulching with grass clippings; this helps keep water in and weeds down. That seems like a win/win to me.

This year I decided to really stock up on mulch materials and go to town with my mulching - in a sort of Ruth Stout style. Yesterday, hubby brought this home for me...

so I decided to get to it, starting with my zucchini bed. I made four hills for my different zucchini, then put newspaper down around them. I watered this to soak it, then put some leaves and grass clippings on and watered again. In a few weeks I will put some zucchini seeds in each hill and I should have a work-free, weed-free bed. When I first started doing this I thought that it was not very visually pleasing, but actually the grass starts to break down quite quickly and the plants grow out to hide the rest of it so it ends up looking nice too.I ran out of newspaper so only got the two hills done so far. (you didn't want to read yesterday's paper anyway, did ya honey?)

If I want my zukes to get a head start, I can even put an old milk jug over top of the seeds to make a little mini greenhouse for them. Another trick that I am going to try this year is to plant some radish around this hill, that way any hungry little critters will nibble on the (dispensable) radish leaves instead of my (indispensable) new zucchini sprouts.