I am slowly starting to renovate all of my foundation plantings for various reasons but mainly because their is no rhyme or reason to what is in them. I'm also upgrading my water drainage in the process. I am looking to use cuttings and divisions of stuff I already have as well as move some of the shrubs, but most of the shrubs are going bye-bye. I am planning on mainly filling most of it in with groundcovers. I have a couple different kinds of creeping evergreens, as well as sedums, snow on the mountain, and phlox, and pachysandra. Obviously I know it takes time for these things to grow and fill in and competition from weeds makes things even slower. I don't have time to be out there every day pulling up every little weed that comes up, that is why I want it all filled in with thick groud covers as fast as possible. I plan on pulling everything out including existing mulch and landscape fabric adding some leaf mould and compost into the soil covering with lots of wet newspapers, replanting, and adding a very thick layer of mulch. I was thinking an effective way to keep weeds from seeding while waiting for my groundcovers to fill in would be to pre mix a good amount of corn gluten right into my mulch as I apply it, I don't plan on planting anything from seed directly into the beds so would this do the trick?? I am going to catch serious flack from my wife if this becomes weed infested just like the rest of the beds around our house. We lead busy lives and are trying to simplify our life, maybe someday I can get into more diverse landscaping but right now I just don't want to pull weeds out of a new bed that I spent a lot of time and $$ on. Because eventually with our busy lives the weeds will win and the ground covers will lose.

Jason