Frank Miles wrote:
What's the magic trick to dealing with weeds if you want to garden
'organically' _and_ are trying to go 'no-till' ? That is, without
spending all your time manually pulling them? And with limited
space I can't solarize without losing a year.

Thanks for any tips!
-F

stirrup hoe, good control of the area around the garden. like
a deep enough edge to prevent weeds from intruding underneath
and a wide enough pathway around to keep a lot of things from
flopping over and dropping seeds in.

note that this doesn't prevent all weeds and it will take
several years to get rid of the seed bank in any newly
cultivated garden, but after several years it does get
easier once you understand how it goes.

we keep about an acre of gardens here with using the
stirrup hoes and no-till or low-till organic techniques.

but you have to use the hoe, it goes quick to just
skim the surface. closer work near the garden plants
may need to be done by hand or i use a large steak
knife with a wooden handle or a small mason trowel.
the sooner you get the weeds the easier it is.

as summer gets on the garden plants get bigger and
crowd out more weeds from sprouting as easily but again
you cannot let things go. just work on a schedule and
go through all gardens in rotation.

i keep things as simple as i can here, but we have
a lot of decorations and small gardens that are more
work too. so if you can plant a bigger area it is much
easier with fewer edges and obstacles. i also plant
the pathways once i'm done planting the bigger plots
if i have space for something. i'd rather grow some-
thing in a space than leave it bare.

green manure and cover crop as much as you can.
peas and beans are yum.


songbird