Garden area prep mistake--need advice

10 years ago

I should have known better. It was last October and I had ordered a few hundred miniature naturalizing bulbs and thought I had the perfect place to put them. It was an area @ 20x10 that had never been planted and had been covered with broken slate from an old roof for years. I cleaned up the slate and pulled up the rhizomes of tall weeds, plus virginia creeper vines and trucked in several wheel barrow loads of compost. Then I planted my bulbs. It looked great in the spring, albeit dotty. I'd have to wait for the bulbs to multiply and self seed. I over-sowed with packets of annual poppies--my first time planting any.

Meanwhile, as spring wore on I discovered that my early efforts had led to the sprouting of all kinds of noxious weeds--especially dock, poke, pigweed and lambsquarters and the Virginia creeper also returned with poison ivy to boot. I pulled what I could, but treatment was complicated by still maturing bulb foliage and poppies in bloom. Every time I disturbed the dirt, it seemed like more weeds cropped up.

So, now what? The poppies are about done and the bulbs are pretty much dormant and I've got all this soil once again about to be exposed by clearing dead foliage i.e. sun+moisture=more weeds. How do I get rid of my perennial weed problem? I'm afraid to use the newspaper/mulch smothering technique due to the small bulbs beneath. And, what could I eventually plant that looks good over the bulbs that I want to multiply ? (It's a somewhat westerly facing site with kind of dense soil from not having been worked).

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Comments (7)

mzdee
10 years ago
Why not do the newspaper and mulch? Bulbs won't be a consideration until spring. By then weeds will histrory. You can remove mulch for bulbs and maybe try some Preen to keep the weeds down.
aachenelf z5 Mpls
10 years ago
Yes, the newspaper and mulch shouldn't affect the spring bulbs. The newspaper should be rotted by then and bulbs won't have any problems coming up through the mulch.

You could always try something like Roundup on the current weed population. In fact, you could probably continue to use it the rest of the summer as long as there aren't any garden plants actively growing in this area.

Kevin
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The one thing I might add to the discussion is N. You're adding a lot of organic material and cellulose in the form of plant fibers to the soil, and the bacteria need nitrogen to break down cellulose properly. In professional composting operations, they have to add some form of nitrogen to the manure/sawdust bedding to get it to "cook" properly, and adding N to your garden amendments in the fall will help speed up the breakdown of all that organic matter. If you add too much organic matter to the soil, in such a time frame that it can't all be broken down over the winter, then the bacteria will suck up available N during the growing season to finish eating the cellulose, and you might see it in your plants next year. Note that there are a lot of "mights" and "ifs" in the above paragraph. I just wanted to add that in case you planned on adding a mountain of uncomposted grass clippings, leaves, or any other organic matter; adding uncomposted stuff is just fine but you just have to be mindful of the extra N requirements. I add uncomposted horse manure/bedding to my soil in the fall and over the winter, mainly because the horses are constantly making fertilizer, and because I don't have a tractor with a bucket to turn it over. I just add more N to my soils to compensate. Works well, my soils have never looked more rich.
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
10 years ago
i would use 100% round up [actually full strength is 41%] ...in the very expensive applicator at the link..

cut plant.. one drop on the stem...

if children around.. return RU to properly labeled container for storage .... or mark the applicator appropriately ....

repeat ad nauseum until you win ... perhaps every few weeks ... as you kill off the deeper rooted perennial weeds ...

a light layer of mulch will help as most weed seeds are surface sprouters.. so if you cover the surface.. you can reduce such.. but if too deep... you will lose you annual .. self sowers ....

a pic might get you other ideas ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: brand is not important
susanzone5 (NY)
10 years ago
It's a relatively small area. I had the same problem. The solution is to weed by hand all the plants you don't want, before they set seed. After a few years, the perennial weeds lose energy (not having their leaves) and all the seeds have sprouted and the problem cures itself. It takes persistence, but it works for me.
mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
10 years ago
What is the end goal of the area? Is it eventually going to be a perennial garden? a meadow garden? a mulch garden?

If you are just looking for ideas, I'll suggest a mowed meadow. Just wait until the bulbs die down for the first mowing, and treat it like lawn. Lawnmowers are extremely good at taking care of the woody weeds that are truly vicious.
sujiwan_gw 6b MD/PA
Original Author
10 years ago
The end goal was to have something to look at from the kitchen window aside from a mass of weeds that couldn't be mowed due to the fallen slate no one could figure out what to do with.
I have shrubs ( quart sized viburnums) planted toward the back and wanted to front them with a spring show of miniature bulbs and some kind of filler flowers that would take over once the bulbs are through.

Unfortunately, I have a mixture of "barnyard grasses" and invasive grasses (quack) that tend to take over and choke out everything, so a meadow lawn approach won't work well. It sounds like a nice idea, though.
mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)
10 years ago
A meadow lawn is simply a nicer expression for the 'it's green and I mow it' school of lawn maintenance. It's green, and you run a lawnmower over it. End of story.

The slightly longer version is that very, very few lawn weeds are even in the same category of nastiness as the woody weeds that can sprout up in unweeded, unmowed space. So in a lot of cases, the secret to happiness regarding a real garden mess is to clean it up to the point where it can be mowed. It sounds like you've done that part.

Garden area prep mistake--need advice

Comments (7)

mzdee

aachenelf z5 Mpls

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Garden area prep mistake--need advice

Comments (7)

mzdee

aachenelf z5 Mpls

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