Laying old newspapers on the soil surface has many benefits: it makes the soil fertile and keeps weeds away

Can laying discarded old newspapers directly on the soil surface really make the soil more fertile and prevent weeds from growing everywhere? It sounds a bit crazy, but it is actually a fantastic gardening trick.

If you are someone who loves nature, then you definitely have to learn this: newspapers should not be thrown away carelessly, but you can collect them and use them to properly improve the soil in your yard, while also preventing weeds from growing everywhere.

This is a little trick an old gardener figured out through his own experience. You can try it in your backyard. If you have a small yard at home, the yard is overrun with weeds, and you do not want to buy all kinds of chemical herbicides, then you might as well give this method a try. The one below is his yard, and the soil was very poor at first.

If you do not have old newspapers, you can use some black plastic sheeting, cardboard, straw or wooden boards instead, and the effect is about the same. You can even prepare some fallen leaves or decomposed wood chips and spread them over the soil surface, so that weed seeds beneath the soil are prevented from sprouting, which helps improve the soil condition.

Cover old newspapers around the plants and flowers, as shown in the picture below. When covering with newspapers, avoid the various ornamental flowers, and after that you need to water regularly.

After covering with newspapers, you need to water regularly, so that the water seeps through the newspaper or other mulch. This keeps the soil loose and also improves the soil structure, attracting earthworms to improve soil fertility.

After laying down a layer of newspaper, you also need to cover it with another layer, about 3 to 5 cm thick, of fallen leaves or decomposed wood chips; you can also cover it with some bark, and these are all good choices.

For the newspaper, use ones that do not contain too many chemical components. Most newspapers nowadays are lead-free, and the newspaper itself can decompose while also blocking weed growth.

Eventually these fallen leaves and wood chips, along with the newspaper at the bottom, all fully decompose, and the soil in the yard becomes more fertile. This process takes a fairly long time, generally about half a year.

In the end we can find that many earthworms have come into the new soil, and they are very helpful for improving soil fertility.

If you do not have old newspapers, you can also replace them with other things; various types of cardboard that decompose easily are also a good choice.

If you do not like using various chemical fertilizers to improve the soil in your yard, then you might as well use these very natural methods to improve the fertility of the soil in your yard.

Is this method suitable for you? For me, it is well worth a try.