Avoiding weeding

[The Meromorph]

Our flower beds in our new house (ten years ago) started out as pure Tennessee Red Clay. Eventually, natural action under the lawns has turn that into passable topsoil, but the flower beds were another problem entirely. Tennessee Red Clay absorbs a lot of water when it rains, and gets very slippery and sticky. In the summer it dries quite quickly to a hardness that will bend a moderately priced spade...
We added three inches of Peat and rotavated it in.
It essential to mulch in Tennessee to prevent the drying out (even after soil improvement). We decided to cover the flower beds in 'gardening fabric' (a water-permeable membrane)and cover that with a large pine-bark nuggets mulch. It worked fine for about three years, and then we started to get lots of weeds.
It seems that organic mulches gradually decompose into rich soil. This gave a two inch layer of good soil for the weeds to get started in, and they then sent fine rootlets into and through the fabric, integrating themselves with it!
We had to pull the whole lot off. Fourteen large garden trash bags full of what had been expensive mulch and fabric.
We relaid new fabric, and this time covered it in three inches of river pebbles. Seven years now and no problems.

[Opsa]

We have red clay here, too and it drives me nuts.

We have to put sand and grit under parts of our beds so that the excess water falls under the soil and doesn't bog down the topsoil.

We also get TONS of weeds. I ususally weed in earnest during late winter and spring, but when the weather turns hot, I start letting the weeds go. By that time, I figure that the invited plants have had the upper hand (my blistered one, of course!) and the weeds will be helping to sheild the soil from the hot sun and will help retain water. Plus, some of them are beautiful. If anyone points them out I like to say I am cultivating our native plants. Denial can be a useful gardening tool.

[Vita Curator]

After I have the garden rototilled in the Spring, I also lay down the garden fabric.  I tried the fabric one year but did not care for it as much as the water permeable plastic.  I lay down the sheets in the garden, then I would use logs to hold it in place until I spotted those little plastic mulch thing-a-ma-jigs to push into the garden and hold it down.

It works wonders, keeps the ground moist, warms the soil so I am able to have lettuce and spinach VERY early in the spring and best of all, NO WEEDS!  I HATE WEEDS! (yes, I am shouting here  )

Happy planting!!
Spring will be here soon!!!

[Aggie]

Plus, some of them are beautiful. If anyone points them out I like to say I am cultivating our native plants. Denial can be a useful gardening tool.

Many of them are also quite tasty when young... some keep it even when older, like purslane!  I looooooves stinging nettle in particular, although it's not your standard garden weed.

[Opsa]

We have pokeweed her, among the zillion others available, but it is my fave. Apparently you can eat the shoots or roots or something while it's young, but it gets poisonous at some point and I don't know when that is, so I've never tried it.

But poke is so pretty when it sets berry in the fall! I'd take it in and put it in a vase if I wasn't afraid my cat would eat it.

We get prarie primrose here, too and I always let it be because it's so gorgeous! And last year we had partridge peas, which I think are lovely. I used to let the bindweed go too because it's so beautiful, but have since learned better. It choked out one of my climbing roses!

If only I could develop a love for crabgrass!

[The Meromorph]

Opas! If you kill all the crabgrass, how are the little crabbies gonna get high!

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

We relaid new fabric, and this time covered it in three inches of river pebbles. Seven years now and no problems.

After I have the garden rototilled in the Spring, I also lay down the garden fabric. ...

(in the voice of deep southern drawl, like Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon rooster of Warner Brothers fame)

cartoon on youtube

Y'all are way too high-tech.  Roun' heah, we jest use ordinary newspaper.  Several layers interleaved works wonders.  It's free.  It lasts for many years, if covered up with rocks, bark, leaves or even straw.  If the covering layer is thin, the paper prevents weeds from taking root, keeps the moisture in, but easily permits rain to percolate into the soil below.

Layer your area before planting--cover the whole thang.  Then with a sharp spade, poke holes where you want plants.  Make an X.  Plant before covering the papers with topping of your choice.

[Opsa]

We used the newspaper method to prepare two daylily beds. We put the newpaper directly onto the grass in the areas we wanted the beds in fall, weighted them down with rocks. In the spring we had an easy time cutting holes in what was left of the paper and planting the daylily rhisomes.

Meri- I never kill crabgrass, I just move it (if it will budge)to a bare spot in the lawn and mow it. The crabbies remain at a party altitude.

[Bluenose]

I just mulch our garden.  I find that if you put down about 100 mm (4") of mulch, the weed problem is pretty non-existant and the few pathetic ones that do try to put their heads up are easy pickins.  I use sugar cane mulch around my herb garden and wood-chip mulch everywhere else. although most of that is going to be re-mulched soon with "bush mulch" which is basically eucalypt leaves and twigs.

The "soil" around our place is actually 2.5 m of fill, basically heavy clay that has been compacted when the developer extended our street into this little corner of the estate.  Although I have a few beds with imported soil, mostly just a sandy loam, I primarily plant into the clay.  I break it up a bit and mix in some gypsum, but mostly I just choose plants that like clay.

Sibling Bluenose

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Hmmmm...I'll have to suggest this all to my stepfather. We get oodles of crab grass (the fortnight lilly is barely scraping byu under all of it, despite our best efforts) and lotsa spiney, pokey things, like goat heads and spurs. Otherwise, I may have to spend many days of this summer on my knees weeding out the nsaty buggers. DX

[Bruder Cuzzen]

SAVE THE WEEDS!
               Oh woe unto this earth when humans endeavor to wipe out plant species as well as animals,besides weeding is half the enjoyment of gardening unless of course when the gardener is faced with much acreage.