"Bertie Doe" wrote in message
...
As we all know, one of the biggest pains, is digging and weeding
each year.
It's particularly annoying when you lift the spuds in Autumn and you
note
how 'clean' the soil is - i.e. lack of weeds due to the cover
provided by
the potato foliage. The following Spring, the same plot needs to be
dug and
weeded.

One of my neighbours has been given ten 9' x 9' porous plastic
sheets. She
uses one for earlies, another for lates, another for leeks and so
on. When
she lift the spuds, she'll cover the ground with a sheet. The areas
used for
cabbage, may have some weeds and grass, she doesn't weed, but
simply covers
the harvested area with plastic.

It sounds a great way to reduce digging, my only concern is that
plastic is
a nice haven for slugs and snails.

I don't know if anyone saw BBc2's Natural World on 4th April, where
Rebecca
Hosking, mentioned the amount of damage done by the plough, to
beneficial
insect life. Most of the friendly creepy-crawlies live in the top 2
inches.
The plough (or gardeners spade) subjects the life-forms to sunlight
and
death, which in turn requires extra fertiliser to compensate.

These rolls of porous plastic have been available in gdn centres for
years.
Anyone used them? How long do they last and is the slug/snail thing
a big
problem. Can slits be cut in them and have plants (say lettuce and
leeks)
grow thru' them, or are they simply a weed suppressant? TIA.
.


I use woven plastic to suppress the weeds in an uncultivated part of
the lotty and in the walkways between the beds. I did plant some
brassicas through slits once but sadly my pesky foxes pulled up the
sheets and duly decapitated the plants with only one or two surviving.

Using this sheet with carpet to add strength to the most used walkways
is a good combo. The soil beneath the sheet remains very wet and is
drawn into the drying beds which obviously evaporate the moisture and
dry out.

Anyway, just one thing, if you don't have couch (which as you say
isn't great with acid), you probably won't be very successful with
Kale as the Kale is a lime lover. You will get much better results by
liming the soil.

TJ