i am annoyed and frustrated and it's my own fault. lat year when we bought the house the owners had the gardens all set for the season. They had put manure down and I assume they had planned to rototill it in. Well, we were so busy that the garden was the last thing on out mind and we let weeds and grass get in there.

Now that we have rototilled and pulled out a lot of the grass/weeds we are still getting things popping up all over. I spread grass clippings between the rows but what i want to know is what can I do this year in preparation for next? What's the big secret? With the size of this yard and the number of gardens we have in general I can't deal with this issue every year.

And can I jsut admit that after a few years here I JUST saw that we have spell check:vent:

We have bermuda grass, so we've always had a hard time with weeds! This year, we tilled the entire garden area, (plus a little extra). We pulled out all the weeds and then built a raised bed garden in the main area (layers of newspaper, hay, compost and soil). We put the black gardening fabric around the outer edges, as well as a brick border. We have had NO weeds thus far! (I'll try to post a pic later, if I can figure out how to do pictures here!).

I am hoping that at the end of this growing season I can get the beds in order and then torch the weeds. i need to play with some fire anyway LOL

I have big plans of fencing in the gardening area and putting a greenhouse there. We have a hoop house that isn't operational right now and it's not in a great place anyway.

The best way to keep down weeds is to place mulch over your gardens. Use anything as a barrier... old tarps, shower curtians, etc, and then put leaves, cut grass, bought straw, etc on top of that, and at the very begining of spring, take the plastic off, and till the straw, grass or leaves right into the soil. Then you have a completely weed free garden space to work with.

Other things you can do... plant agressive perennials. Mint, chives, lemon balm, thyme, oregano, small bushes such as rosemary, or rodi's will also provide enough shade to keep weeds down. I do a combo of all of these. I mulch some areas (mostly my produce garden), allow other places to over grow (my perennial herb beds) and other places I have bushes that I have to weed under. The biggest thing though is to plan ahead. There is really no such thing as a weed free garden that isn't worked in all the time, but tight/companion plantings, mulching, and choosing plants that will grow agressivly in that area will help a lot, and it won't get out of control.

Some bushes, such as camilia's, create their own mulch if left alone for a few years. Then you have no weed underneith these beauties because they mulch the ground with their leaves for you. I have three across the back of my house that are a natural barrier for weeds and grass just with the leaves they put on the ground every year... and those are evergreens. ;)

Val

I conquered our weeds this year! Here's what I did...

Lats year, at the end of the growing season, I covered every bed, and all the pathways inbetween, with about 6 inches deep of leaves. Then, I covered all that with hay. About 3 inches deep. So the entire garden space looked like a big pile of hay!

A few weeks before the last frost here, I took up the hay and leaves off the beds and piled it up in the pathways. There were little sprouts of weeds just starting to come up, so when I pulled out the hay and raked all the beds a bit, all the weeds that had started got pulled up. And there is a great barrier in the pathways nopw cos all the hay is piled up there.

I haven't had weed problems all season! A little bit of grass is growing in my newwest bed cos it's close to the lawn, but I just get the hand rake and scrape that out every week or so. And there are so few weeds anywhere else that pulling them is a snap! I can totally stay on top of it now.

i have to say that raised beds have saved my sanity.

i struggle ALL the time with weeds out front. planted perrenials last year and am struggling (STRUGGLING) with wood sorrel, bermuda and invasive lirope (the kind that spreads indiscriminately...not the happy edging kind. we have both in our yard.)

in back for my vegetable and herb gardens i am using raised beds. layers of newspaper on the bottom, dampen those...then layers upon layers of leaf mold, grass clippings, manure, organically rich topsoil (mine came from a former cow pasture turned strip mall.) daily i have little sprouts pop up but since all my plants are established now it's easy to determine if they are weeds or veggies/herbs so we just pluck them out :D

highly recommend raised beds and layers. bermude is a pest if it isn't controlled (it is trying to invade my layered bed around my mailbox that i put in a couple weeks ago...i layed black landscape fabric down and layered on top of that and the bermuda is coming in around the edging pavers.

When they are just beyond hand pulling
I pour white vinegar on them. It kills them sort of like Roundup.

You can buy big jugs of it. Perhaps you could put some in a spray bottle to aim better.

The garden smells vinegary for a while but I don't care enough to not use it!

I use vinegar too. :) In a spray bottle. It does kill everything... right down to the dandelions.

Val

We just put in our very first ever in-the-ground garden, and so far no major problems. :)

I picked a spot that was mulchy and nothing to look at, and had DH pull it all out. There was, apparently, weed blanket down in some areas and an old rubber border from previous landscaping that Half-ass-Harry (the old owner's new name around here) just buried! :rolleyes:

So, it was pretty dead but FUULL of earth worms :heart: It's the most amazing soil, I'm convinced. I added a big bag of some kind of organic veg growing soil that I found, and just raked it all together once the ground was good and loose.

I haven't seen a single weed yet - but when we first dug it up there was a lot. I just made sure to get them all by the roots and pull them entirely out. It helps that we tilled the soil a good six inches down, too, I think.

I'll make note of all your suggestions for the fall, though :)

I somehow missed mulching last fall - knew I should do it and forgot. I'm writing it on the wall calendar now! ;)

We moved in last June/July with similar issues with the garden plot left by the previous owners. In fact, it had totally grown over into grass. We pulled out a lot, but ended up just tilling in the rest - so this year it's insanely weedy. And we weren't able to get things together to get the chickens on that spot only this spring, which would've been nice (they have done a really good job on my flower beds though, because it's near the porch they like to hide under and their favorite dust-bath spot).

I think we just decided to buy landscape fabric and soil and spread out the landscape fabric and do raised mounds of soil, compost, etc, on top of the landscape fabric. But I'm going to go out there for an hour and try my hardest to amend some of the less weedy spots and get the tomatoes in. Maybe we'll do half and half and compare. :D