Gardening advice from Triathlon participants

My husband, my hero, completed a sprint Triathlon this weekend!   The reason I am telling you this is because I am super proud of him, but also I was eavesdropping on another conversation while waiting for him to complete the bike leg of the event.

Two guys were talking about gardening and I heard 2 great pieces of advice:

1) You know those pesky weeds that are in your garden, especially the grass that just doesn't disappear by pulling it out by the roots?  Well, a suggestion for that was to get a PVC pipe, about 8" wide and cut it down to about 6" high.  Put the PVC pipe over the weeds/grass you want to disappear and spray it with weed/grass killer.  WE are not into using chemicals in our garden, so be careful of the kind you use.  Make sure when you are using the PVC pipe it is not close to your veggies. And of course there are other ways of taking care of your weed situation, but this is just a piece of advice.

2) If you decide to grow melons next spring/summer, put hay down all around the plants.  That way you will keep the weed situation at a minimum and when the melons set down shoots you don't have to weed around the plant as it is getting bigger.