I just read an article in Ruth Stout's No Work Gardening book about an experiment she undertook (or maybe it was Richard Clemons, but in the same book) that involved just what you're discussing. They found that smothering the weeds with 8-12 inches of hay made the area plantable and usable almost right away (like within a few days). Where they wanted to plant something, they dug through the mulch and planted if it was a transplant and if it was a seed, they put fine peat moss and bagged manure (because it's powdery and broke up well) in a layer on top of the hay and planted the seeds directly on it. The author said it was a really good technique for long-root carrots. He (or she) also said it required a bit of attention with the sprinkler at first to make sure the seeds didn't dry out.

It sounded like a pretty easy technique to use. Just get a lot of hay (spoiled or moldy hay is cheaper, sometimes free) and layer it on. No tilling or weeding or hoeing. No equipment needed other than something to haul hay.

If you have time and energy and you are somewhat fit you could use a fork to turn it over and rake out weeds. Or solarize it this summer with clear plastic and turn it and add compost or composted manure in the fall.

Get free manure and only pay for the clear poly.

Jon

You could try covering the area with cardboard (many stores will happily let you dig through their dumpster to get cardboard boxes, or even save them for you) and holding the cardboard in place with stones, bricks, whatever is handy and heavy. It will break down, but that's okay--think of it as brown compost!
The clear plastic covering will work too, but the generated heat will kill a lot of beneficials, like earthworms and micro-organisms. However, when you start to plant, their cousins will move back in.
Good luck--a vegetable garden is a source of much pleasure!

Oh, thank you, thank you.

I read that clear plastic creates a greenhouse environment, and that black plastic will do the trick. But it is such a huge area - I can't imaging the cost.

In Ruth Stout's book, was it such a big area? Did she cut down any weeds first. The ones here are up to 5' tall. How do I know that the hay doesn't come with weed seeds?

Should I consider mowing, tilling and a cover crop?
What about the thistle?

Depending on circumstances, you might want to consider burning it off -- ridding yourself of weeds and their seeds while leaving a beneficial, nutrient ash.

That's not always appropriate though.

Running a brush hog over it, raking out the debris for composting, mowing the stubble close, then either solarizing it under clear plastic (may not be possible in far-northern zones), or smothering it under heavy "Killer Mulch" is another option.

You can plant some things right into the mulched areas or you can leave the killer mulch untouched until late fall when you till it in to provide organic material to the soil with the intent of planting in the spring.

If you're looking for a really good workout and have the time you can grub all the weeds out by hand/hoe/digging fork.

I would mow it first maybe twice. Once higher to get it down to like a tall gras level. Then mow again on a real low setting to get it as low as you can. You can till but it will bring up weed seeds that will germinate (take it from me-I learned the hard way). If you then mulch with the hay on top of that it would help to keep them from germinating. I would put the cardboard on top after you till and plant and water it really well. Worms love cardboard. They will help to speed up the process of eating the cardboard and that will help. Cover it with hay to keep it well mulched. I am starting to gather old hay and straw that farmers don't want to save for next year. I am changing my beds around. Tilling will get rid of them quickest but you will have to keep battling unless you mulch it after.

Hope that helps. I am new to cover crops so I don't know about that. My garden is 66x66 right now and I am expanding. I tilled off the sod and will till once more in a few days. I will rake that away and put in the compost pile and then cover the new patches with cardboard with rocks on it and soak it really well and keep it wet. I also will put my used chicken bedding on it so to manure it for spring.

Nichol I hope that helps a little.

Mamala,

I was in a similar situation as you when I first started my garden. The people we bought our house from could have cared less about landscaping or gardening, but the people who owned the house before them LOVED landscaping and gardening. As a result there was a lot of beautiful landscaping and garden patches that were totally overgrown.

For the step garden at the side of my house, I just started digging. I turned over all the soil and pulled out all the weeds. It was a lot of work, but it got rid of the weeds (at least until the weeds make there way back, as weeds always do). All the hard work was worth it. I now have a beautiful garden that I have continued to improved upon. This year we added fresh soil, and next year I will add soil from my compost bin.

what i'd suggest is, slash the weeds down with a brushcutter/whipper snipper, then check out one of our raised beds presentations the straw bale is an easy on to follow, and go that way.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

are you wanting a garden this year or next? Depending on the technique you choose, it could be next year before it is ready.
Solorization with plastic can take like 8 weeks from what I have read about how to do it.
Tilling will bring up more weed seeds, an immediate cover crop may help if it crowds out any weeds.
Cardboard is a good idea and you can always put a "nicer looking" mulch over it as you have the money to do so.
Some pple have luck with straw as a mulch, I have not, but I have seen some nice gardens with straw mulch. I have never tried hay as I have heard it has a lot of weed seeds.
You could just make rows with landscape fabric or newspaper and plant within it and mow down the paths or put cardboard in the paths. Eventually the weeds will go away with continuous work.
Our garden was full of weeds too, we decided to go "smaller", kind of, and put in raised beds. We are still working on trying to get rid of the weeds around them. But we have plans, it is a slow work in progress!

Hope you have a beautiful garden soon!

My Garden Blog

How is burning it off done? How do you keep the fire from getting out of control?

I think the size of the garden in Ruth Stout's book where they tried the mulch method was 20x40 or something like it. They didn't cut the weeds down, but just pushed them over and stepped on them. To me, it sounds easier just to mow them down and run over them with a riding mower on the highest setting. Even if it doesn't cut the weeds up, it will do the work of pushing them down by itself. Then cover with cardboard and hay, or just hay.

Burning off is done by first checking with your local fire department to see if it is legal to burn where you are, and then checking with them to see if there is a burn ban in effect. If there's a burn ban or it isn't legal, then you shouldn't burn. If it's okay, then you need to dig or mow and rake a break (like a ditch or a zone where the fire won't easily cross) around the area you want to burn. Get a couple people to help you with some wet sacks or other fire-fighting stuff. Pick a day when the wind isn't blowing much. Put some gasoline (a quart or gallon) along the upwind side of the burn area. Light it off. Monitor to make sure the fire doesn't get out of control or burn out prematurely.

Make sure there aren't overhanging power lines or tree branches over the burn area. If you burn near houses or other structures, make sure you have multiple hoses, if possible, in position and running before you light the fire. Make sure your neighbors are aware of what you're doing so they don't panic and fall the fire department, and so any with asthma or other lung issues can take precautions that day.

I would not recommend burning for a residential area.

How bad is the Canada Thistle?

I had an area that was filled with wild carrot, sweet clover, Teasel Thistles, horse weeds, and sundry grasses. Actually the ground was fertile from all the deep rooted weeds and grass from many years. I mowed first. Later after deciding to plant melons there, I tilled and added amendments to the hills for melons. It did great for melons. The Canada Thistles were not terribly bad. If they are really bad, it about takes roundup on the thistles when they are nearing flower stage. You should not spray the whole area, but only on the thistles.

ONe more "here's what I did"...We moved the area very low then covered with newspaper (many layers) and cardboard. WE then covered that with leaves and grass clippings. It sat all winter. This spring we brought in 6 yards of compost. There was one 4/16 section that I was going to put in asparagus. It was torture digging up the ground--CLAY!!. I wish I had gotton 7 yards!

Good luck in whatever method you use.

haha, had to laugh when I got to the power line bit, as I had a boyfriend when I was a teenager, whose best friends dad, employed them both on his farm, to dig the breaks on his fields for stubble burning (heavy machines involved) anyway they had been doing such a good job, he started to trust them after a while, on the last day, they decided to celibrate at lunch time with a couple of drinks and went back and finished the field, they missed 1 wooden telephone pole! it burned and fell down, pulling others behind it! best friends dad not best please, he was banned from doing it himself for years, fire service had to over see, (£££££) and he had to pay the telephone company (big ££££££)
funnily enough, he didn't employ either of them again!

round-up give it three days and hire someone with a tractor to till it

Weeds don't burn in the summer they are wet thats a spring job

Lots of good advice here - hope you find something to grab onto. I have a battle royale with weeds every year - clearly I'm not doing it right. Figure out how much time/energy you want to invest.

Smothering works - but it will take a lot of material. You can plant right away though.

I think if yiu can afford to roundup an area the size you mentioned you can hire someone to clear it for you!

My potatoes are thriving in mounds of decomposing straw. Last year I O/D it on the leaves - too acidic, plants did not thrive, and this year no sign of leaves!

For broadleaf weeds I usually cut them down, rake them out and then turn over the sod/til it, and pull out out any roots I can find. If there is grass involved I will use Roundup on the whole area, wait a couple of weeks for it to kill off the grass, and then turn or till. Roundup is supposed to kill everything, but broadleaf weeds are often not affected as well as I would like, it really zaps the grasses though.

Burning is an EPA issue now (at least that is what the fire department told me the last time they showed up with flashers and sirens) so burning rules may be the same for all of us. Basically, if you are anywhere close to town, or buildings, you can only have what amounts to a camp fire for a weeny roast.

The best hay that I've found is grown from Coastal Bermuda grass. Once it is established in a field it chokes out all weeds so you don't have to worry about them showing up in the hay in your garden. Plus the CB grass itself doesn't seed.

Ask around for it. You don't have to live near a coast to find it. It's grown here in the semi-arid middle of Texas too.

I am inspired. You guys are a wealth of great information. I am definitely looking at next years garden as the season is really short here.

I love the straw bale raised beds, and will try at least one of those in the area.

Otherwise, I feel a plan coming together, now I just need to muster the energy ;)

I would like to do a burn, since I am not in a very residential area, but I am too chicken to do that.

So I will start with mowing to see the condition of the soil.

I think I will need to round up the spots with thistle, as there isn't much.

I may have almost enough cardboard to cover the area, and a few pieces of black plastic to help solarize the rest. I am tempted to till what I mow to help enrich the soil and then cover with cardboard. Thoughts?

I can get free wood mulch, would that be good to pile on the cardboard to keep it down?

Thanks so much everyone.

Fresh wood mulch might hinder more than help. Plus, some woods are not desirable for vegetable garden mulch....cypress and likely walnut.

Oh good to know. It comes from the city, so it is a mix of everything with primarily elm.

Steam and eat the nettles now, they are very nutritious (steaming will remove the stinging compounds).

For the rest, you have to go with a weed block. I do prefer cardboards topped with a lot of mulch because you will apply it and Nature will do the rest. Wood chips as mulch will help only in areas where you will plant veggies that get along with chips, (basically, most veggies which you transplant as a plant, tomato, squash,.. and most large seeded veggies, potato, bean, garlic, ...) but they, with the cardboard underneath, will minimize your weed problems for a few years. During those few years, you can not direct seed these areas.

For areas that you will direct seed (carrot, radish, spinach, lettuce, beet, chard, ...), I would go with cardboard with a rapidly decaying mulch on top. City compost would be ideal, but also old leaves with some urea mixed in can make the cut.

If you go with compost, you can seed fall vegetables immediately in this second area. Water them, the compost will give them plenty of nutrients, and most roots will punch through the cardboard. No reason you should not eat some kale, collard, arugula or radicchio starting this September and ending in December. If you go with leaves, and keep them watered, you might be able to seed in August (then it would be only kale and arugula and bok choi).

Any chance you can rent a few goats to go through the area first, and then continue with your own measures? I'm not kidding. I'm not sure if they eat Canada thistle though.

I mowed several times constantly working the debris to the edge. Then I bought some everything killer. Sprayed to entire area, approx. 40 x 200. Started planting 7 days later. I have never had a garden doing so well. I figured all the years on the farm no tilling corn, why wouldn't it work for vegetables.

Boy, my garden area is full of bindweed and thistle - something I did not realize the first autumn when we moved into this house. We had been living at 7500 ft altitude, where those weeds are not much of a problem. So when we moved down to the plains that fall, I rototilled the garden area before planting out some perennials I'd brought with me.

The next spring I discovered my error when lush crops of bindweed sprang up across the whole 45 x 15 plot. So I tried covering with cardboard and mulch, and solarizing some areas with plastic and thick weed cover. Nothing has stopped the weeds. I've left some parts under plastic or weedcloth and mulch for two or three years and when I pull it up the ground is rock hard, but the bindweed and thistle are still alive underneath - pale but alive.

I wish now I'd had the knowledge to use Round-up on the entire area that first year before even trying to start a garden there. Too late for that now. I just keep nudging it away as I plant more of the area, intensively hoeing and re-mulching. The weeds have declined a bit in the part I've worked most intensively, but still every day I go out and pull some bindweed and thistle out of my growing beds. It's like a horror movie - the weeds that wouldn't die!!

How you get rid of weeds depends entirely on whether they're perennial or annual weeds and what kind of root system they have. None of the mulching suggestions will permanently kill off perennial weeds that sprout from deep, deep in the ground. We have thistles whose roots originate nearly a spade depth and a half, right into the clay layer around here. Dandelion roots as big as your thumb and as long as your forearm, too. Monsters like that simply aren't squelched by plastic/cardboard/mulch... no matter how thick. All you're doing is killing the tops and they return just as strong from the roots underneath, again and again and again (you get the idea). Stuff like this has to be either dug up ENTIRELY or sprayed with chemicals. There's just no other way. Same with persistent grasses. Leave any portion of root and the problem will be back again in short stead. God help you if you till up the soil and break all the live perennial weed roots into multiple pieces.

Annual weeds on the other hand... pphhfftt. Easy peasy. It's just a matter of finding the method you like best. We prefer to rototill once in the spring, then hoe for a month or so while the soil warms up, then put down a thick straw mulch. Problem solved. Nothing complicated, fancy or expensive.

(Our available garden area is roughly 1/2 an acre, by the way, but we only garden a quarter of that each year. The rest is maintained to keep weeds down. This year we're going to be busy with a newborn very soon, though, so we're only gardening roughly a 40 x 40' area. Just wanted to say so you know I'm with you on the scale of this.)

Interesting. Because I have always built raised beds I seldom ran into the monsters. But if you bend them before covering in cardboard and mulch, many of them will keep on pushing along the soil, and eventually exhaust themselves. Those that pop through, however, I have always dealt with using a small paintbrush and roundup.

the worst I have had were some brambles that resided in a place where I built raised beds. It took several Roundup applications to get them completely.

I read that canadian thistle can reach 15' down and spread out for a diameter of 25'. Plus it colonizes, meaning that every chop creates the urgency for survival by growing some more! It does sound like a horror movie.

I was hesitant on the Round Up because it is a veggie garden, and even though it is supposed to go inert, I wonder...

That said, is it worth the battle? I think I will go ahead and use it on the thistle.

As for the other weeds, I am still trying to identify what they are. A few I know, others, well I better get a good weed book ;)

Oh, congrats on the newborn.

Question - Should I mow, rake away and then spray? What does this do for future tilling? Will I have to spray again?

Or should I spray, till, wait a bit and spray again?
And then cover with cardboard, etc.

This is all prep for next season.

Just a quick note to anyone considering burning. Make sure that you don't have poison ivy, you don't want to be breathing poison ivy fumes.

drhorticulture,
Where do you rent a goat? My husband laughed at me when I suggested this. I read some where that they eat poison ivy, along with lots of other weeds. It sounded like a good solution to me, but we could not find anyone renting in our area.

Good gardening, Mary

If the weeds are really tall already, you'd have to use way too much chemical and it would probably get all over you, too - yuck. I'd mow on whatever the highest setting on your lawnmower is, then spray. Wait a couple of weeks for those to die and see if any new ones come up. If so, then spray those. Wait again and keep repeating if you have to. Till when no more perennial weeds are coming.

As far as mulch for the annual weeds, there's really no point at this stage. With as long as you say this area has been neglected, you're probably in a situation much like ours where every time you stir the soil, there are going to be a bazillion new seeds exposed. You're going to be dealing with annual weeds for years to come, but at least they're easy to keep under control. Get yourself a good hoe and get out there before they get any true leaves or even sooner. I hoe once a week at least until mulching time. If you keep the soil loose - don't be walking all over it all the time - it's much easier to hoe. Once you've managed to take care of the perennials, another approach with the annual seeds is to rototill, let them germinate, rototill, let them germinate, and so on. You're getting rid of seeds this way instead of just cutting off their sunlight with mulch, in which case they're still there, lying dormant, waiting for their turn to cause trouble. This much tilling isn't always the best idea for soil tilth, though, depending on what kind of dirt you've got.

First, though, I'd concentrate on the perennials and get them eradicated asap. Worry about the others later.

P.S. Roundup tip from my (conventional) farmer neighbour... spraying in the fall is more effective than any other time of year. The plant is directing it's energy down into its roots instead of up into growth, which means you need less chemical to kill the plant at its root.