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scgreenthumb1987

best weed proof garden ideas

scgreenthumb1987
10 years ago

In another month I'll be back to discing the soil and retilling making my garden much, much larger. Going to end up being around 150 ft x 90 ft. Now the biggest fight I had with peppers this year was hours of weeding. What's the best way around this part time job? I work at a yellow pine lumber mill so I'm thinking mulch, which cost me at employee price 10$ a heaping truck bed full. Like they will fill your pickup until you say the springs are bottomed out. But I've read that mulch sucks nitrogen out the soil when decomposing . any ideas?

Comments (18)

  • pepper_rancher
    10 years ago

    I don't think it will leach very much sitting on top of the soil, mixing it into the soil may be a different issue. To further help prevent weeds and as another measure to make sure leaching doesn't occur, put down several layers of newspaper or a layer of cardboard and then put the mulch on top of that.
    The area may be to big, but if you put down clear plastic with a heavy mil. In advance of planting for the season It will sprout and cook (kill) a good quantity of the weed seeds. Then remove the plastic and put down your newspaper or cardboard and mulch.
    Hope some of this helps you this year, I HaTE weeding!

  • scgreenthumb1987
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Instead of plastic which would be rather pricy, I do own enough heavy tarps to cover it. Would that work?

  • pepper_rancher
    10 years ago

    Not sure. if enough solar energy will penetrate it would work... Search ' soil solarization ' in google and check some info out on it.

  • seysonn
    10 years ago

    I'm thinking mulch,...........
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    Here is a couple of pennies woth opinion.

    Mulch , in general, is one of the ways to combat weeds in addition to other benefits. Now, the question is : WHAT KIND OF MULCH ?
    If it is pine nuggets/barks then it can absorb the the water soluble fertilizer. But if you apply compost, manure and granular fertilizers before spreading the mulch, then it should be fine. Also drip fertigation under neath the mulch should not be a problem. But if you apply fertilizer by watering can or with one of those MG units, then some of the fertilized will be sucked in by the pine barks. To minimize this effect you can soak the mulch layer by water first and then apply water soluble fertilized. That is how they fertilize orchids.

    The problem is what are you going to do at the end of season? You would be fine if you don't till it in. Otherwise it can be a fertilizer trap. That is one of the drawback of using wood chips, bark .. as mulch. We see sometimes gardeners complaining that despite fertilizing, their plants are not doing well. Come to find out that wood chips were the culprit.

    This effect is also a characteristic of coarse and unfinished compost. But in this case the effect is mild and has a benefit of regulating nitrogen availability to plants. In other words, compost and organic matter can prevent fertilizer leaching, to some extent, by holding it and releasing later gradually as it breaks down.

  • CanadianLori
    10 years ago

    You don't need really heavy plastic to use the idea of pre-killing the weeds before planting. Those cheap rolls of plastic at Home Depot (approx $10) would cover a very large area - you just need to keep it weighted down here and there to make it effective.

  • CanadianLori
    10 years ago

    forgot to say in the paint department...

  • woohooman San Diego CA zone 10a
    10 years ago

    You want at least a 4 mil thickness for solarizing soil. All it takes is a sharp pine needle or what have you flying through the air or a stone sticking out of the soil to pierce the plastic and release heat.

    scgreenthumb: Tarps would be great if they're CLEAR. A colored tarp of any COLOR just doesn't generate enough heat to do any good. Also, plan on losing a summer growing season --- you want to solarize in the dead of summer. Regarding MULCH robbing Nitogen, untrue.S

    Sapwood and chips, in particular, rob N. And that's only if it's incorporated into the soil. Mulch is laid on TOP, so no issue. BARK doesn't rob N. Nor do any of the numerous other things people mulch with such as newspaper, straw, grass clippings, leaves, etc.

    I mulch with a product the dump here in San Diego makes out of chunks of wood, wood chips, grass clippings, etc(Yard waste). I don't ever have troubles with it. I even till it in at the end of the season, but first I rake up the large pieces of wood and dispose of. What I till into the soil is like sawdust by the end of the season and will be broken down completely by the next season.

    Kevin

    This post was edited by woohooman on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 13:09

  • ab2008
    10 years ago

    I actually go into the woods and rake 50 gallon bags of leaves at a time and use that to spread throughout the garden. Works wonders for me if you're able to do it, and they are FREE, and it just adds back to the soil when it decomposes.

  • scgreenthumb1987
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks everyone. I'll probably go with mulch and either rake it out or burn it after the season/ before tilling. I can get real mulch made out of bark. Chips about the size of dimes made from the actual wood , or even flat out dust lol. Which would be best.

  • DMForcier
    10 years ago

    The bark, by far, if it is 90% or more actual bark. Then you could even till it in without ruining the soil, though I'd think you'd do better raking it off at end of season.

  • seysonn
    10 years ago

    I'd go with the bark rather than wood chips.'
    Bark won't compost but wood chips are partly made of live/moist fibers that will compost AND ATTRACT TERMITES AND PILL BUGS.

  • kypepperman
    10 years ago

    landscape fabric over the entire row with light mulch on top to hold it down. period

  • sandy0225
    10 years ago

    We use Dewitt landscape fabric over the entire garden. Hold it down with landscape pins. Till before you put it down, install drip tape irrigation underneath on every row. Then we plant the plants through the fabric. In the spring, rip out the remainders of the plants, sweep or leaf blower to clean off the residue. Plant everything in different places through the same holes. I have a greenhouse fertilizer injector so we inject fertilizer through the drip tape. Will post a picture when I find one took earlier in the season when it all looked pretty!

    Here is a link that might be useful: Garden pic

  • scgreenthumb1987
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I thought about fabric but saw a lot of negative reviews

  • sandy0225
    10 years ago

    We have had ours down for three years now and I love it. We have virtually no weeds, no tilling. You can plant even if it rained a lot. We set up a drip tape manifold and have shut offs on each row. So we can plant one row at a times, turn on the water, water them in for a couple hours, the water comes out slow. We hardly ever lose a plant and we carry them right out from the greenhouse without even hardening them off. Maybe the people that didn't like it didn't spend enough money for good results. You have to use the good ground cloth like Dewitt sunbelt or the Dewitt 5 -7 year. That cheap stuff from menards isn't worth the time it takes to put it down. We get all our drip supplies from e and r seeds in Berne indiana. They do mail order, but being amish they don't do internet. They have nice catalogs they send you and you can mail order anything from them. We go pick it up since we're only 55 miles away.
    We have three gardens set up this way so far, one 60x 100, one 60x 130, one 90x 40. Going to do a new one this year 30x 300. We grow and sell at the local farmers market. No way I could do all this all summer if I had to till and hoe all these gardens in addition to picking all week.

    Here is a link that might be useful: E and r seeds

  • sandy0225
    10 years ago

    Also you don't mulch over it, you leave it exposed and pin it down with fabric pins around the edges and then about every 6 feet in the center so that the wind doesn't pick it up in the winter. We get a lot of wind here! Let your plants get good and frozen in the fall then the first nice day in the spring, clean up the garden, pull up all the dead plants, they pull up easy by then, and either sweep it off with a push broom or use the leaf blower on it. Then plant everything in a different place on a rotation to avoid plant diseases but use the same holes in the ground cloth. We run liquid fertilizer through the greenhouse injector and fertilize the plants during the growing season through the drip. Anyway that's how we do it...

  • kuvaszlvr
    10 years ago

    over a span of 20+ years I have tried everything one could think of to avoid the dreaded weeding. What I found worked best, but takes a bit of work at the beginning and work cutting holes, was thick black plastic. I would cover my entire garden (35' x 75') with it. I didn't have to weed and I had wonderful yields. But, I learned something, you have to, absolutely have to, remove it in the fall. Another added benefit, I never had to water in the summer, when everyone else was watering constantly, I didn't water once. The black plastic retained soil moisture. I had the great idea that raised beds would be better... not even close, they fill up with weeds and grass almost as fast as doing nothing at all. At least in raised beds the weeds are easier to pull.
    Pam

  • flowersnhens
    10 years ago

    I paper and straw my garden every year. I put newspaper down neatly between the rows first and then straw on top of that. It looks neat and tidy, and I have no weeds !! I never have to weed as long as I do this right from the start of the garden.

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