I have a small flower planting area of about 25 sq. ft. When I plant flowers in it each summer, the weeds come up so bad, I can keep up with weeding it each week. (I also much about 3 or 4 inches, but that doesn't stop these weeds).
Before I plant flowers, if I soak the ground with Roundup, how long would I have to wait to plant the flowers ?
I bought some new stuff called Preen. It is pre-emergent, meaning you put it on when the weeds AREN'T there, and it keeps them from sprouting. Says it can be cultivated right into soil next to existing plants. Check it out. I hope it works as good as it says, I have a large area that needs weed control.
25 sq ft is a plot the size of an ordinary full size mattress, weeding can't take more than 15 minutes a week... you can't be for real... do you at least bathe once a week, I bet you think wiping your ass is too much work.
"James" wrote in news:hp-dnSVau-o8BKjTnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.localnet:
I live really close to Brooklyn and most of them are nicer. He COULD use a short lesson from Dale Carnegie.
That being said, there are alternatives to the chemical solution. 25 ft^2 is really not that hard to mulch. If you are not having success with your current mulch, it's time to try a different one.
Do you start your flowers from seed, or do you use seedlings? If the latter, spreading some black plastic garbage bags over the plot before you plant them, and then using a trowel to punch holes in the plastic where you want to plant should work just fine. You can then cover the bags with whatever mulch you like best- the bags will stop almost anything else from growing.
Salt hay also works wonders, if you can get it. It's a beach grass, and suppresses weeds because it high in, well, salt.
Someone else mentioned newspaper. That works well too, and like the plastic bags, just lay them out over the plot, punch a hole where you want to plant a flower, and after you're done planting, cover it all up with your cedar.
If you're planting seeds, things get more complicated.
To inhibit weeds, you might need a mulch that is more dense.
I use hardwood leaves -- ash, oak, liquidambar, and zelkova -- and allow them to pack down. I rake the leaves from my lawn and paved areas in the autumn and place them in my beds. I also place fallen small branches over the leaves to prevent the wind from removing them. Around my oak (Quercus lobata), I anchor the leaf mulch with chickenwire pegged into the ground.
Around my camellias, I use the output of my office shredder.
Both leaves and shredded paper form dense layers throught which weeds have trouble growing. No, they don't completely prevent weeds; but they sure do inhibit them.
I laid out newspapers with long narrow gaps where the furrows for the seeds were. I then planted the seeds in the furrows. I did that with cucumbers and then did a similar thing on my other summer gourds (zucchini and crooknecks), only leaving small squares rather than long furrows.
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