How to refresh permaculture pathways

Every other year we bring in a load of wood chips (usually free from local arborists) to redo our pathways. This year with our expanded switchbacks in the food forest we needed 25 yards worth of chips!

Before laying down the new layer of chips, we coated the pathways with burlaps bags from a friend’s Fair Trade coffee roastery to help smother any persistent weeds.

On previous projects I did this with corrugated boxes retrieved from dumpster diving, but failed to remove the remaining tape before covering with chips. We’ve spent the last two years picking up pieces of plastic tape as they push to the surface. Oops!