The amount of weeds in our garden is somewhat amazing. And it’s not like we haven’t done any weeding this year, a few times. We saw an agriculture site that was talking about various types of row and ground covers and comparing them for permeability for water, cooling or heating the soil, and how well they decompose. Cardboard decomposes, unlike black plastic and other types of row covers, and it has an added benefit of cooling the soil under the cardboard, a handy side effect in really hot climates. So we are trying this as our next step in dealing with out of control weeds.
For example, this is strawberry bed before weeding for the second time.
We completely weeded three raised beds for our strawberries only a couple of months ago. The weeds went ballistic and totally filled the beds as seen below. The strawberry plants are fighting for their lives in there.
More weeding this morning. Still have one strawberry bed to weed tomorrow, the one in the picture above.
We have a plan and it involves the cardboard we’ve been saving for years. At the end of this bed, towards the top, are two rows of swiss chard seeds planted in little holes in the cardboard. We will see how that works in a couple of weeks.
Now the strawberry plants in this bed will not have to compete the hyper aggressive weeds. They have a little space around them so the plants can get bigger.
So yeah, we will still have weeds which can grow near the strawberry plants but they won’t have a good way to pick up a head of steam and cover the entire bed, and it should be relatively easy to keep ahead of the weeds.
The onions need to be weeded yet again, so I guess I’ll do that tomorrow after we finish covering both strawberry beds with cardboard.
For the other beds, it is almost impossible to turn over the soil for planting due to the heavy density of weeds, and we went with the nuclear option.
We covered seven of our raised beds with black plastic and when we uncover them next year we will see how things look. At least the weeds will be dead. Then if we use cardboard and make holes in it for plants, the majority of the bed won’t be accessible for weeds and gardening should feel fun rather than futile due to the weeds.
In theory.
These are size 8 which is actually too big, but since I bought them accidentally, I will use them to make a bead knitted purselet.
Summer is coming! The black raspberries are looking great, and so are the red raspberries. The black and red currant bushes are starting to ripen their fruit harvest. That will be awesome when we have those to play with and make into jam and tarts. Soon, first of July which will be here before we know it.