You just finished planting a new bed of your favorite produce. A sense of accomplishment and satisfaction fills you as you look upon a newly cleaned, re-composted, reformed, and replanted bed that took labor and time to perfect. That feeling becomes agitated as unwanted guests begin growing alongside your favorite plants within a few short days. The weeds! Oh, the weeds are back!!!
Some folks love to weed. Those individuals need not read any further. Go instead and enjoy what some call the "therapeautic" act of weeding.
For those who can't stand the constant act or have too much production to keep up with all the weeding, here are a few helpful strategies and materials we use at the farm. The following practices help fight back against weeds while simultaneously devoting most of your labor to production rather than actual weeding. The goal is to reduce weed pressure while not actually weeding!
Cover the Soil with Plants!!!
"Weeds" tend to be those plants that establish disturbed and exposed areas the quickest. When an area is cleared of vegetation and the soil is exposed, soil becomes susceptible to blowing and washing away. Areas with soil erosion lose their ability to grow food and sustain life over time. Weeds are the first defense against soil erosion. When soil becomes exposed, weeds establish roots that hold soil in place. Anywhere there is exposed dirt, there will be weeds. So, if you want to limit weed issues, cover your soil!!!
When we say 'cover your soil,' we suggest you plant as densely as possible, leaving as little soil exposed as possible. Consider growing crops like radishes, turnips, and leafy greens that can quickly cover an entire bed. These crops not only prevent weed growth but also contribute to soil health.
Salad mixes and lettuce are great. Instead of growing these plants as individuals with several inches of spacing in between, aim to carpet the entire bed with seeds. We plant six rows on the farm in a twenty-four-inch wide bed, with each row seeded twice. The result is a dense carpet of leafy greens. These plants will not grow into heads, but you can cut the tops and bag the leaves each week for up to five weeks. "Cheap Frills" salad mix, "Tokyo Bekana" cabbage, and arugula are great food crops to do this with. They germinate within a few days and begin outcompeting weeds for space.
Fast-growing turnips and radishes are excellent choices in addition to leafy greens. Varieties like 'Hakurei' turnips and 'French Breakfast' radishes can be harvested in just thirty days and practically grow on top of each other. You can create a dense carpet that suppresses weed growth by seeding six rows in each bed with two seedings per row. Additionally, these crops help break up soil and improve aeration, alleviating soil compaction.
Planting Successions of Fast-Growing, Dense Crops
This is my favorite approach to mitigating weeds over a season or two.
Identify a bed that has a lot of weed pressure. Densely plant a leafy green or root crop that germinates and harvests quickly. During its first growing cycle, you should see the crop outcompete some of the weeds. When the crop is mature, harvest and turn the bed over immediately. Prepare the bed again and plant another succession of the same crop. The quick turnover of each succession will allow you to clean up beds several times throughout the season, growing more food for yourself and cutting down on weeds simultaneously.
Companion Planting
Some food crops cannot be grown close together. Plants like tomatoes, okra, and collards require significant space between each plant for productive harvests. The significant spacing allows weeds to grow in exposed soil throughout your growing beds. A simple answer to covering exposed soil is to companion plant your "space-loving"' crops with fast-growing plants that take little resources. These plants include leafy greens, peas, and fast root crops.
During the summer, the farm plants peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and okra in two rows spaced two feet from each other in a thirty-inch growing bed. Each plant is grown two feet apart, leaving ample growing space in the beds. We plant one to two rows of arugula, romaine lettuce, salad mix, or Tokyo Bekana between the main crop's two rows. The companion plants are seeded heavily to cover as much space as possible and compete against the weeds. These leafy greens do not compete with the main crop for sunlight, water, or space, making them ideal partners.
Tomatoes are planted in one row with individuals spaced two feet apart. The farm will seed two rows of a season-loving pea on the outside edges of the thirty-inch bed. Peas will grow dense and tall, eventually trellising the tomatoes themselves. When this happens, we crimp the peas, leaving them in the soil. Most peas will die after this, leaving behind a dense mulch that covers the space around the tomatoes and helps suppress weeds.
There are many ways to companion plant that are not listed here and that we have not tried on the farm yet. Feel free to do some more research and try different approaches. Most plants will do well together, and as long as you cover as much soil as possible, you are probably on the right track to growing more food and suppressing those pesky weeds.
Cover the Soil with Non-Living Materials
Ideally, you want to cover as much soil as possible with as many living things as possible. Living plants not only outcompete weeds, they hold soil, add biodiversity, bring in beneficial insects, feed us, reduce soil temperatures, and help hold in more water. That being said, you may cover areas with non-living materials to combat weeds for various reasons, including not having anything to plant, not wanting anything growing in certain areas, or time is against you in planting beds. Whatever the reason, here are a few non-living practices to use.
Mulch is a favorite of ours at the farm. Mulch includes dead organic material that breaks down over time and can be used to cover soil to suppress weeds. Common types of mulch are untreated wood chips and straw with limited seeds. We fill footpaths with wood chips. Anywhere on the farm, we don't want or need plants growing; we cover in wood chips. The wood chips take a long time to break down and are heavy, keeping weeds from popping up. Over time, wood chips will break down, leaching nutrients into our growing beds and building healthy soil on the farm.
Straw is used in our growing beds. It serves the same purpose as wood chips but breaks down much quicker. Since straw is softer, we can rework the beds and replant them more quickly than if we filled them with wood chips.
Don't have wood chips or straw? You can use any organic material that break down and adds nutrients to your soil. Leaves and grass clippings from lawns work well. These work like straw and can be placed in or around growing beds. Make sure to use grass that does not have seeds.
Cardboard and paper that do not contain chemicals or plastics are excellent at beating the weeds. On the farm, we will lay a blanket of cardboard and paper over footpaths before laying four inches of wood chips on top. The cardboard and paper are another layer that keeps weeds from growing up and accessing sunlight. As the cardboard and paper break down, you must add more layers.
The last material is weed fabric. The most effective weed fabrics are heavy-duty plastic ground coverings. Plastic weed fabrics are great at keeping weeds from growing, but unlike organic materials, they do not directly benefit the soil.
If you are growing in the weed fabric, tightly lay out your fabric on top of the growing bed. Cut or burn holes where your crops will grow and plant in those exposed areas as soon as possible. The rest of the bed will be covered in fabric, so no light will reach it, and no weeds will grow. Weed fabric is highly effective at suppressing weeds, but it does not offer the benefits of biodiversity and soil improvement that come with using companion plants or organic mulches.
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