Update (part 2):    • Early Results: Hay vs Straw. Which mu...  
People are usually surprised to hear that we use hay as mulch on our garden, and ask if we actually mean straw. You see, unlike straw, hay often contains a lot of weed seeds that can sprout up amongst your veggies. But in our experience, this has never actually been a problem, as long as the mulch layer is thick enough and we never till it in. Any seeds that do germinate, usually do so on the surface and die off long before actually taking root in the soil below. Now, we have had plenty of well documented struggles with quackgrass, but we’re pretty confident that those weeds came from seeds already present in our natural soil or crept in from outside the fence. But just to be sure, I’ve recently constructed 5 raised beds and throughout the season, we’ll be conducting a bit of an experiment to see if hay actually results in more weeds than straw.