April showers bring a lot more than flowers, they also bring a host of weeds that thrive on the disturbed soils of a farm. We have long-term plans for weed control that include no-till practices (which keep weed seeds buried and minimizes the soil disturbance that weeds love) and burned landscape fabric mulch.
However, we can’t implement either of these strategies immediately and we have a noxious perennial weed that we just can’t kill: nut sedge. Nut sedge grows from an underground tuber, which inconveniently stays in the ground when you try to pull it up. It just regrows in a few days.
While we save up to buy landscape fabric for our annual beds and search for other permanent solutions, we are grateful to the good folks at Counter Culture Coffee in Durham for providing us with the poor farmers’ alternative: burlap coffee sacks.
We are spreading burlap around our perennials such as these willows. We like burlap because it is a natural fiber that will ultimately decompose, meaning we can just pile mulches on top of it, and it is reusing what would otherwise be a waste product. We are hopeful this will greatly reduce our nut sedge problem in the willows, where it was worst last year.
Spring Forth Farm of North Carolina 
Such a smart solution, you all!
How has this worked? Any sign of the nutsedge? We’ve had success using a thick layer of newspaper topped with wood chips from the tree service guys or spoiled straw.
It worked OK for one year but would have to be reapplied every year, so we are moving to landscape fabric, which is a permanent solution.