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Vegetable Gardening

Another Raised Bed Question.. Site Selection and Invading Weeds

15 years ago

When we made our raised beds we levelled the ground and took off some of the top layer of grass & weeds, thinking this would discourage the growth and invasion of various weeds into the bed. I also put layers of newspaper down; the layers were thickish. Thought this would help with discouraging any roots from penetrating our beds.. For the most part this has worked..

The beds are close to a river (great for watering) and whatever vegetation, from brush to hawthorn to smaller trees, that line the river. We built them on part of our lawn so not in the bush. They get good sun exposure.

I noticed last year some invading roots.. Perhaps from the various bushes (12 ft away). Perhaps from the various weeds. I am quite surprised because of the precautions we took.

Does anyone have any experience with creating their raised beds, weed roots that invade from the ground up

What steps did you take when creating your bed to discourage "from the ground up weeds"?

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Comments (4)

gardenlen
15 years ago
g'day clare,

not that much that you can do about invasive roots from plants outside of teh garden beds, apart from maybe put in a root barrier between them and the garden area. the root barrier is a rubber based mat that gets inserted into the ground like a retaining wall to prevent roots from near by plants from entering a given area. probably not going to be cheap but should be effective.

do a google or such for root barriers in your area and try to be sure to select someone who knows exactly what to do. they usualy need to cut a trench into the soil to slide the barrier into this i have seen can be dones using a jet of water to cut the trench.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page
clare2008
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the tip!! Hmm, wondering if there are other ideas, or those wi/ experience with fibrous roots from plants outside the raised beds getting in to the beds.. And how to deter. The rubber matts sound like a neat idea; perhaps too expensive.
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If you don't want to undo all the work you've already done - another solution is to pile up a deep layer of good soil on top of your raised bed. You can smother the grass and rot out the thatch and roots, but not with 3 inches of soil. It would have to be a foot deep at least and you wouldn't be able to plant anything for a year. Not only is there grass turf under there but plenty of weeds and weed seeds, so everything is going to spring to life in a mad dash to overtake your mound of good soil. Smothering all of them means burying under a deep layer of soil and mulch or turning the soil/mulch like it is a compost pile and let nature break down all that matter. If you don't want to wait then you have to remove what you've done and start over by either killing the grass with chemicals or digging it out. No matter what you do, weeds are going to show up in this bed anyway, so you'll be doing a lot of work either way. Weeding is a part of gardening. A battle that never ends. But if you start out right you can keep things under control.
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stephen_albert
15 years ago
Root barriers can also be made of metal, masonry, and wood. Generally barriers that extend down 24 inches should work. Invading roots from woody plants are following the water--going to your vegetable bed because that's where the water is--growing up into the garden to the water. It may be a bit late since you nearby plants already have horizontal roots, but deep watering of woody plants will keep roots growing down not laterally.

Here is a link that might be useful: HarvestToTable.com
belindach
15 years ago
I have problems with bermuda grass. I find keeping my soil soft is best. I can easily pull bermuda up by it's roots. I am careful and not to add weeds to my compost pile but weeds occasionally find they way to my beds but they are also easily pulled.

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