This year, I'm using all of the experiments that I summed up in Small-Scale No-Till Gardening Basics
to streamline our vegetable garden without ditching the biological
imperative to keep the soil happy. To that end, I'm applying wet
newspapers beneath straw wherever possible, which means all I have to do
is weed the small area right around the base of each plant rather than the whole bed before mulching.
While the method doesn't
save any time in the short term, it does seem to reduce my need to weed
dramatically over the course of the year. That said, if you live in a
windy region and have relatively high raised beds, I'm not sure I'd
recommend the trick. Last month's newspaper mulches blew all over the
yard during what turned out to be the windiest month our farm has had in
a decade. Hopefully the current lull will extend for long enough to let
the paper meld to the soil below and the straw above, preventing my
hard work from blowing away.
I mulch my raised beds with about 2-4 inches of straw a la Ruth Stout. Most of the time, despite that thickness of straw, the plants just pop up through the straw and the wind, despite my living in what feels like a "wind tunnel", doesn't blow the straw away. Putting straw down less than 2 inches, however, usually means I have to run all over the garden picking up the straw that the wind has blown.
I haven't tried wet newspaper, but I just planted some fruit trees and have saved lots of cardboard, so I will be putting down the cardboard and then the straw on top to kill of any grass/weeds that will try to grow there.
Thank you for those ideas, by the way!