What's the magic trick to dealing with weeds if you want to garden 'organically' _and_ are trying to go 'no-till' ? That is, without spending all your time manually pulling them? And with limited space I can't solarize without losing a year.
Thanks for any tips! -F
The secret is MULCH . Cardboard or multiple layers of newspaper will stop the weeds from reaching the sunlight . Heavy layers of straw will do the same , plus will enrich and lighten your soil as it decomposes . See if you can buy or borrow (your library may have it) a copy of the Ruth Stout gardening book . Here's a link :
I first thought that the glue and ink and residual chemicals of the paper-making paper-recycling process would render corrugated cardboard " not suitably organic " but a google search seems to prove me wrong ... < ? > Happy mulching ! John T.
I use cages made of concrete reinforcing wire (about 24"diameter and
5 feet tall) for my tomatoes . I lay of pieces of cardboard on the ground around the plants stem before I place the cages . Viola (yeah yeah) no weeds inside the cage to pull . I generally use either wheat or rice straw between cages .
Watering ? ... doesn't the cardboard shed the water somewhat ? John T.
It does a little . But the straw around it doesn't , and both help a lot to prevent moisture loss from evaporation . The soil is usually moist unless we're in a drought .
The cardboard sounds like a good it for me to try this year. I do use similar cages made out of the reinforcing wire.
I _try_ to do that, but with ~1000 sq ft of garden it's easy to miss the small ones. By now (30+ years) the selection pressure has led to the smallest, fastest, most prolific weeds :(
We have her book. It's great! Our copy was printed 1971 (paper is yellowing). We mulch as we can, limited by [a] the slugs and snails that *love* the mild damp environment mulch fosters (diatomaceous earth only being partly useful in the Pacific NW due to rain); and [b] our limited supply of mulch material.
It's especially a problem with overwintering crops, with lots of rain. There's a difficult transition as the last of the real crops are removed, and the overwintering seed is put in the ground. This fall/winter has been even more challenging as we've had wild rabbits going after the vetch, small-seed favas, and some other overwintering plants (they love the fresh new greens!). This leaves the ground more exposed than usual. The weeds I'm getting are small but so numerous!
Once the edibles are established in the spring - and especially after the rains fade into the usual dry summer, weeds are not such a problem.
We save seed for corn, peas, edamame(soy), beans, scallions, one of our tomato varieties, and intermittently some others. It all depends on how long it takes to produce viable seed, and whether the varieties exist that we like. For example - do you grow carrots? As a biennial that's gotta take a lot of extra space, right? We've lately given up on buying corn seed in part because we like the old style non-sugary corn, and can't find the really early varieties we've enjoyed in the past. Our short growing season limits our choices...
Thanks for the ideas! -F
stirrup hoe, good control of the area around the garden. like a deep enough edge to prevent weeds from intruding underneath and a wide enough pathway around to keep a lot of things from flopping over and dropping seeds in.
note that this doesn't prevent all weeds and it will take several years to get rid of the seed bank in any newly cultivated garden, but after several years it does get easier once you understand how it goes.
we keep about an acre of gardens here with using the stirrup hoes and no-till or low-till organic techniques.
but you have to use the hoe, it goes quick to just skim the surface. closer work near the garden plants may need to be done by hand or i use a large steak knife with a wooden handle or a small mason trowel. the sooner you get the weeds the easier it is.
as summer gets on the garden plants get bigger and crowd out more weeds from sprouting as easily but again you cannot let things go. just work on a schedule and go through all gardens in rotation.
i keep things as simple as i can here, but we have a lot of decorations and small gardens that are more work too. so if you can plant a bigger area it is much easier with fewer edges and obstacles. i also plant the pathways once i'm done planting the bigger plots if i have space for something. i'd rather grow some- thing in a space than leave it bare.
green manure and cover crop as much as you can. peas and beans are yum. :)
songbird
except that sod has a huge nutritional value, what i do is dig a deep enough hole and bury it so the worms eat it up. a layer of cardboard or newspapers over the sod will help keep a lot of the roots from coming back up. just do it again if a second or third time is needed. i've had some gardens where i've skimmed and buried them a few times just because i had injuries and could not keep all the gardens clear. so they were allowed to go to weeds and then got cleared again. the worms love it all when you can bury it. don't waste it.
if you get a seedy plant that has dropped a lot of seeds on the surface, again, dig a hole and then scrape all the surface area in the hole and bury it again. if you put it down deep enough and don't disturb that area again for years then the worms may take care of those weed seeds or not, but if you keep after it with the stirrup hoe they won't be a major issue again.
songbird
Frank Miles wrote: ...
cover crops with more rotational planting might help with that.
songbird
Frank Miles wrote: ...
oh and the other thing about smaller weeds, they might be ok to just leave alone since they don't grow tall enough to outcompete the garden plants. some things do ok interplanted like that. not sure what specific weeds you might be up against though. :)
songbird
snipped-for-privacy@ccanoemail.ca wrote: ...
avoid any of the colored and shiny cardboards as they may have plastic coating on them. just use the plainest cardboards you can find with black ink. remove any tape or labels that might also be plastic coated. otherwise worms love it and chew it up eventually. also it is easy to redo if the card- board gets chewed up, just scrape the mulch back and put it down and then move the mulch back on. works great. i've done that for smothering some tough areas of weeds and grasses.
songbird
Ralph Mowery wrote: ...
it's good for smothering problem areas and such but i don't use it in all the gardens because it is in the way if i want to do rotational planting in different areas (which i do in all my vegetable gardens).
songbird
mulch, and lots of it.
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