Would like input on potentially drastic option for garden beds

I am really open to suggestions here.

The last two summers have not been good gardening seasons for me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, my garden beds are bit hard to access.  I had to put up fencing around them, but it ended up being fencing right on the edge, making garden access difficult.  Secondly, as a result of difficult access and terribly hot summers, I am fairly bad about getting out and weeding on a timely basis.  In the past I was able to smother weeds with cardboard and straw but last year the weeds just laughed at me.  We left for a short trip and when I got back the weeds had swallowed up my garden beds!

On a further note, my last two summers were fairly busy and my garden time somewhat limited.  Next summer and the following summer will be busier still.  I still want a garden, but I have less time for weeding than ever before.

By now I have a terribly weedy garden bed, with some very stubborn, perineal grasses growing in the mix.  I am considering a drastic option that even a couple of months ago I would not have considered—I am thinking about spraying with vinegar.

I know that vinegar is OMRI approved, but somehow I just feels wrong.  But part of my circumstances are that my garden beds consist mostly of mushroom compost—heavily decomposed wood chips.  While the wood is mostly broken down, there is just enough wood fiber left over that it prevents a garden hoe from really getting in and doing it’s job.  And even if I cut off the tops of the weeds, the roots are still viable.  I am thinking that vinegar may be my best option.

So my question is how much vinegar do I use?  Will one application do the trick (I bet not)?  Can I use regular vinegar for kitchen use or should I buy specially prepared vinegar?  And is there any harm in using vinegar?  It doesn’t seem like it should hurt given the OMRI listing, but I have never used it before.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

Consider this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_solarization

Ted,

I have seriously thought about solarizing my beds.  I guess my biggest problem with solarizing is that I have gone to great lengths build up a healthy community of fungi, bacteria and other soil goodies in my beds.  That’s why I started using wood chips in the first place.  I fear that solarizing will kill the good along with the bad.

If I had reason to believe that vinegar would be harmful to my garden beds, I wouldn’t use it either and find some other solution.

But seriously thanks for the input.

Eric

Hi Eric,

Thanks for this thread. As you are well aware, I live in your “neighborhood”, and I had a very similar garden experience this year.   ……while 2 years ago I had one of my best gardens.  Like you, I blinked for a very short period of time and the weeds took over.    I have been spending a great deal of time removing weeds and rebuilding the soil.  

The article claims that solarization actually causes an increase in beneficials. I have been tempted to try this myself in the past, but definitely will after reading that article. As far as weeds, you can just chop and drop them before they go to seed, and get extra mulching and nutrients from them without the seeds continuing the cycle. This, coupled with solarization between seasons could be worthwhile. Them grasses though.. whole different story. Please let me know if you find an answer on than one!

*answer on that one! .. dang autocorrect always trying to make me sound illiterate.

Eric said, "So my question is how much vinegar do I use?  Will one application do the trick (I bet not)?  Can I use regular vinegar for kitchen use or should I buy specially prepared vinegar?  And is there any harm in using vinegar?  It doesn’t seem like it should hurt given the OMRI listing, but I have never used it before.

As you said about solarization, I feel the vinegar may do the same thing.

You cannot use kitchen vinegar it needs to be horticultural vinegar which might compare to pickling vinegar though I am not sure.  I leave the vinegar to use for pests.

I would go back with cardboard now and then topped with 6" wood chips asap.

By spring it is possible the weeds will be gone or at least easier to pull up and have not grown taller.

I have a suggestion for your fencing.  Not knowing the size of your garden beds, I hope this works:

We use what is called a "gap" instead of gates.

The fence would be connected at two opposite corners.  the other corners would be where the "gap" is.

The "gap" is held closed by a wire that goes from the fence over the fence post.

When you tend the garden you remove the fence at the "gap".

Does this make sense?

I could try something of an experiment.

In total I have 3 garden beds.  Two are 8’x16’ and the third is about 6’x32’. The third bed has been dormant for a couple of years owing to heavy deer pressure and difficulties getting it fenced and protected.  By now that bed is extremely weedy.

I could try solarizing just one portion of that bed to see how well it works out.  It is also a chip-bed, though an older one.

This still leaves the issue of what to do with the other two beds.  Again, I keep coming back to vinegar as it seems like an effective option, though a drastic one.  I just hope that it doesn’t have unwanted side effects.

And again, I would love to hear from anyone who has had experience here.

Eric

Since we cross-posted and you give the size of your beds the corners I mentioned could be fence posts at the center of the beds with either end being where the "gaps" are.

If you decide to use the vinegar remember that vinegar is acidic and will change the PH of your soil if enough is used so some amendment might be necessary.

So I found this article HERE:

https://www.thespruce.com/vinegar-as-a-natural-weed-killer-2132943

As I feared, apparently vinegar is no panacea.  Sure, it kills young weeds just fine, but older weeds will loose their top growth, then grow back from the root!  And somehow I doubt my population of earthworms will like a 20% concentration of acetic acid seeping through the soil!  The article even tells me outright that I need to wear gloves and goggles while using this.

So I see one method for using vinegar without hurting my soil dwellers.  I am thinking about first pulling what can be reasonably pulled (but this is probably limited), and really smothering with cardboard and even more wood chips.  With luck this takes care of 99% of my weeds (last year I lacked wood chips and the weeds pushed my cardboard out of the way!).  I can then attack whatever gets through the cardboard and chip barrier with vinegar.  Knowing where those weeds are, I then pile on extra cardboard and wood chips.

I have found that grass especially likes to grow right along the edge of my raised bed edges.  They sneak through the gap where the cardboard doesn’t quite touch the raised bed edge.  I am thinking about tucking some cardboard down alongside the edge to control those grasses.

With luck this barrier really reduces any need for spray.  And whatever spray that lands on the “ground” will not make it to the garden bedding beneath, breaking down before getting there.  Maybe some baking soda or lime would help out?

At any rate, this is highly preliminary and I am still completely open to suggestions.

Eric

My understanding of vinegar is that it mostly just kills what it comes in contact with, so it won't kill the grass roots. It might knock them back a bit, but with vigorous, perennial grasses, I don't think vinegar will cut it anyway. You'd still be weeding out the roots.

I've never used vinegar on perineal grasses, but suspect it would just make them silky and soft 😋

Ah, you posted while I was typing. I think smothering is your best option, but with serious grass, it can take a couple years or more. Bonus is, it's great for your soil.

Jan, I am coming to the same conclusion.  Vinegar may work for some weeds, but for the established grasses it might just be an inconvenience.

And I keep thinking about all my soil microbes that would writhe under the assault of all that acetic acid.  The more I think about things, the more I don’t like vinegar. Maybe solarizing isn’t so bad?

Eric

Hi Eric, Just know a bit on this subject.....
Household vinegar is 5% actual vinegar and it won't do anything at all to your weeds.

There are no panaceas. Anything that would kill a wide range of weeds will also kill your garden plants. Solarization kills primarily through heat, which means that below a depth dependent upon your sun exposure and overall temperatures, it's doing nothing directly, while above that it kills all but the most thermophilic organisms.

The best way to combat weeds is to give them no space to grow. Use something like square foot gardening, or John Jeavons' biointensive gardening, which is sort of a more Permaculture aware version of square foot gardening. These methods produce a closed canopy garden with no room for weeds. They're also tremendously space efficient.
It's worth remembering that planting in rows is an artifact of mechanized farming that crept into home gardening and doesn't belong

It sounds to me from your description that the first thing you need to do is redesign your garden for access. To care for it you have got to be able to get to it. Your current fencing arrangement falls under Type 1 error, a system designed to fail. Make access easy and everything else will come together.

How about cardboard and then a liberal mattress of compost on top of it? ?

Kaarina,

I am leaning toward doing exactly what you mentioned, but substituting a thick layer of wood chips for the compost.  For the most part, my compost is already a part of my garden bed but is contaminated by weed seeds.

Last year when I went to plant, I did not have a nice supply of cardboard.  I did put down cardboard, but it was thin, lightweight and the pieces fairly small.  When the weeds really started to grow they easily pushed the cardboard scraps aside.  I think I might stock up on cardboard this year prior to planting.

Eric

I would recommend keeping the weeds and just pulling the grass. I would say weeds are our friends in soil management and fertility. If there was a type of weed that hurts you physically (like poison ivy or something really thorny you don't like) or is so rampant that you can't limit it with chopping & dropping (free green manure), then I would address those individually. Otherwise, I would just put the stuff in that you want and support those. You can phase unwanted plants (weeds) out by improving the soil past their preferred conditions over time, mulching and/or introducing a wanted rampant plant that can out compete the unwanted one. If something is really right on top of or in the spot you want then I would just remove as necessary. Again, leaving them on top like mulch to break down and support your soil further. Nature is providing us with a free polyculture and neglected soil management system, among other benefits.

I guess I should be more clear when I used the word “weeds.”

In this case, 99% of the weeds are grasses.  Their root masses are so thick that pulling them removes a significant quantity of my hard-fought bedding.  Just leaving it in place overwhelms the garden, so I need to kill them somehow, even if that is through smothering.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:In this case, 99% of the weeds are grasses.  Their root masses are so thick that pulling them removes a significant quantity of my hard-fought bedding.  Just leaving it in place overwhelms the garden, so I need to kill them somehow, even if that is through smothering.

Not all grasses are created equal!
If the root masses are fairly fine roots, have you considered loosening a bunch with a garden spade in ~squares and flipping them upside down? If you're only talking 4  to 6 inches, I don't think that will injure your biome too much. I've done similar at times.

If the results of that look too much like "bare soil", you could put cardboard over top, but I'd try without to start as the roots may be more inclined to die with light and no protection!

Goodness, I had no idea that vinegar acted as an herbicide, learn something new every day I reckon. Grass is the biggest issue I have with weeds as well and probably even many of the same ones since I'm not all that far from you. In fact, anymore perennial grass is about the only thing I consider a weed.  

Eric Hanson wrote:I guess I should be more clear when I used the word “weeds.”
In this case, 99% of the weeds are grasses.  Their root masses are so thick that pulling them removes a significant quantity of my hard-fought bedding.  Just leaving it in place overwhelms the garden, so I need to kill them somehow, even if that is through smothering.
Eric

Removal of your bedding need not be permanent; you might replace it later with the added bonus of the dead grass. In some cases, you might be able to just turn the whole mess upside down with the grass roots sticking up, I do that a lot. You can also turn the grass into fertilizer by submerging in a big tub of water for a couple of weeks.

I trying to picture what you are up against, if the entire area is covered with well-established grasses, then it's about the same as mine was when I first came here. It took me a long time, a little at a time to get it to shape. I think now if doing it again, I might go with the solarization method and not worry over the effect on soil organisms. Just keep a health supply of them in a compost pile and use it to add them back when the solarization if done. If you have access to them a deep cover of leaves might do the trick as well. I don't like using wood chips because it seems the grass manages to find a way through, and it takes so long to rot. You have to be careful that it stays on the surface too or it will rob nitrogen and seems to me if mixed in the soil makes it dry out badly.  

Cardboard is recommended a lot, but I don't allow it anywhere near my garden. I spent a couple years unloading trailers from China at a big box distribution center. They take steps (not always successful) to keep live critters from arriving along with the product, the chemical stench was sometimes extreme. Cardboard is probably safe, sometimes, or maybe even usually, but I want nothing to do with it.

I find those paper leaf bags work a lot better than cardboard for smothering. Cardboard has much shorter fibers in it, so it gets holes in it way quicker. Every time I go by the yard waste recycling place to scrounge, leaf bags are one of the things I look for to bring home.

Just chiming in with reflections from my recent garden experiences.

I have 6 much smaller beds, 4x10 or so each. I have similar challenges with weeds and time management. I don't have the same fencing concerns, though I might consider it to keep the neighborhood cats out...

I periodically add cold compost which never got hot enough to kill weed seeds, so while it provides lovely nutrition it also lights up with a new stock of weeds after every rain. I would have made hot compost, except like you I also don't have the time to micromanage.

Recently I finished the Ruth Stout composting badge bit for PEP. I think this could be a partial solution. Ruth would put down very thick layer of mulch, as in 8 inches. I can't get that much, but I managed 3-5 inches or so. Then when you have a counter top container full of kitchen scraps, you find an area of your garden that can take it, clear the mulch, spread the compost, then re-apply the mulch. I've found that it keeps me on-top of mulching the garden, skips the compost management steps, fertilizes the garden beds, and decomposes the kitchen scraps at least 10x as fast as the cold compost. Some loads of scraps are gone in a week. The soil biota from the soil in the garden beds are WAY more active than than in higher up layers of the compost heap where the scraps would have lied for weeks or months before breaking down.

My mulch is grass (as much as possible cut without seed heads), garden scraps like pumpkin vines, etc.

The downside I'm experiencing is that I'm pretty sure it's not good to have the in-garden composting action happen directly against growing plants that you want to harvest from. So it's only for sleeping/fallow areas. However since it can be hard to get enough material to mulch that thickly anyway, this can be a reasonable trade off for me since I can't manage all my garden area anyway.

The rest of the growing space I'm doing my darnedest to fill with as much growing vegetable matter as possible to shade out the weeds. Then when I have some time I go in and do a little weeding.

I've also found for me in my current situation (part time work, part time gardener), for plants that it works with, transplants are easier to manage than direct seeds. I was a bit stubborn about direct seeding in the beginning, but I'm just not there yet. I get 10x better results with transplants for nightshades, lettuce, and brassicas. It lets me get the plants in the ground in a more mature state so they can more easily compete with small weeds. Perhaps it's permie gardening heresy, but I just haven't moved up the eco scale yet.

Someone has already commented on the access issues, I have nothing more to add other than to second the sentiment - if you make it somewhere you want to go and want to spend time in you will spend more time in it.

In my own experience with this grassy weeds issue - hard work is the only thing that has worked for me. I have flipped sod upside down, chopped it in with a hoe and grown cover crops, pulled it up by hand, mowed it so short that it surely should have died, covered it with mulch, clippings, compost. Out of all of this what has worked best for me is chopping it in followed up with a thick cover crop, then followed by a never ending crop rotation. I'm sure all of the methods work if you follow them in the proper way.

"The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow"

Wow, so much feedback,

I will keep my eyes open for paper leaf bags as they sound better than cardboard.  I just normally have an abundance of cardboard.

Just to give everyone here some context about my garden bedding, it isn’t soil in the traditional sense.  It is made up from wood chips originating from brush I trimmed and chipped from my own land.  These chips were then broken down with wine cap mushrooms.  Some people on this thread already know this, but not everyone does.  That resulting bedding is extremely rich in microbes and highly fertile.  I really don’t want to go and dig it out unless absolutely necessary as I put so much time into making the bedding in the first place.  As it is, excessive pulling weeds pulls out significant quantities of bedding material so I want to minimize that in the future.

For all the reasons above, I am now pretty much against both vinegar and solarizing—I just have so much invested in the soil microbes.

This is why I am leaning towards smothering with cardboard (or similar) and covering with wood chips or maybe straw.  I can then pull the small amount of weeds (grass) that poke through the gaps in the cardboard.

I like the Ruth Stout idea and might adapt it to suit my situation.

Thanks very much everyone for your continued feedback.  I might sound stubborn, but honestly  it really helps to have someone(s) to bounce these ideas around with.

Thanks again very much!

Eric

I should add that I am changing my fencing situation for better access for next season.

Eric

My keyboard had a partial failure mid post and I had to switch devices. Posting about spring sowing and starting seeds indoors is hard when your S key quits!
The rest of my advice has to do with next spring. Get your seeds started indoors in February/March as appropriate. Rake the mulch back off the beds in April. Let whatever weeds there are stick their heads up. Let them go for a couple of weeks and then flame them. Go over the beds with a weed burner and singe that stuff. A day or so before you plan to direct sow your earliest seeds, flame that bed again, then promptly seed. When it’s time for transplants, burn the weeds, put your transplants in and rake the mulch back onto the bed, leaving the transplants clear of the mulch. Say three inch rings open around transplants.
By burning the weeds back you slow their growth, use their reserves and give your plants a head start so they can out compete the weeds. Putting the mulch back serves the same purposes, plus all the benefits of a good mulch.
And I would still go with a high density planting design. Again, outcompete the weeds, shade them out and give them no place to grow.

Side note: For those with a good, hard-freezing winter, grasses are much, much easier to remove first thing in spring. All the tiny feeder roots, which are like barbed holdfasts, die off/decompose and you can yoink the whole root and rhizome out.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Side note: For those with a good, hard-freezing winter, grasses are much, much easier to remove first thing in spring. All the tiny feeder roots, which are like barbed holdfasts, die off/decompose and you can yoink the whole root and rhizome out.

I have never heard that before. By hard-freezing do you mean like the soil freezes hard? If that's the case here is probably not so... in fact probably no place I've ever lived.

Douglas,

The benefits of a hard freeze are good to know.  Unfortunately that won’t help me as I am too far south for a hard freeze to really penetrate.  I am not certain what our frost depth is, but it is minimal—1-2 inches at the most, and usually measured in millimeters if it is frozen at all.

The more I think about things, the more I think that I really need to take two big steps:

1). Really apply some barrier such as a cardboard & wood chip or similar barrier to really smother the weeds (grasses) without harming my soil biota.

2). Redo my fencing so that I can get much better access to the beds and more easily and more frequently clear out what weeds/grasses do make their way through.

So I have some work ahead that I really need to get done sometime before mid-spring when I would plant veggies.  This is doable, but is really contingent on my time available as I have a very busy schedule starting in January and it won’t let up for about 18 months.

This has been a very useful thread to help me organize my thoughts.  I still welcome commentary, but I have a much cleaner picture of what I need to do.

Eric

Just one small thing. Newspaper kills the weeds off far better than cardboard. Cardboard, being stiffer, leaves big air pockets and the weeds can live a long time in them. Newspaper kind of melts down around all the imperfections and seals the air out. It's more work, but the results are worth it.

L. Johnson wrote:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Side note: For those with a good, hard-freezing winter, grasses are much, much easier to remove first thing in spring. All the tiny feeder roots, which are like barbed holdfasts, die off/decompose and you can yoink the whole root and rhizome out.

I have never heard that before. By hard-freezing do you mean like the soil freezes hard? If that's the case here is probably not so... in fact probably no place I've ever lived.

I've never lived in a place where it didn't freeze hard, so I don't know if grass has a dormant period elsewhere where this trick would work.

I can tell you that, first thing in spring, I can pull out 3' quackgrass rhizomes in one piece. The rest of year, they break into a bunch of little rhizomes which of course all sprout.

Trace,

That part about newspaper is definitely worth knowing.  I mention cardboard because my bedding is really wood chips which by themselves will poke through the newspaper too easily, especially when it gets wet.  But maybe I can lay down a carboard layer, followed by a newspaper layer to "seal", topped by straw or more wood chips.

Excellent thought Trace!

Eric

We had a similar situation with couch grass invasion into our 5 4x50 ft beds. The easiest solution was laying out flakes of straw on the beds to smother the weeds. No cardboard since the rhizomes would punch through it anyway. Same with newspaper. The compressed flakes will expand up to about 10 inches of fluffy straw. Any grass that managed to work its way up had weak roots and was super easy to pull. The key to this is to pull the grass as you see it come through. Once it forms an interlocking mat of roots it gets much more difficult.

After a year the straw decomposed to nice mulchy soil. The thick mulch does cool the soil the first year so spring growth can be slowed a bit but it was worth it.

The main concern is finding straw that hasn't been chemically treated.

Robin,

I will keep that in mind.  How much straw did you use?

With your cardboard, have you tried wetting it first and applying 2-3 layers,  and then covering with a mulch?  Woodchips, compost, leaves...   I find this alone is enough to get rid of 90% of weeds in all my new beds that I've started.   It's been my go-to for most of my properties and anyplace I've put in gardens.   And then a version of spot-broadforking any weeds that do come through (grasses esp.) to loosen the roots so I can pull the entire thing out effectively while leaving most of the soil behind.  

Eric Hanson wrote:Trace,

That part about newspaper is definitely worth knowing.  I mention cardboard because my bedding is really wood chips which by themselves will poke through the newspaper too easily, especially when it gets wet.  But maybe I can lay down a carboard layer, followed by a newspaper layer to "seal", topped by straw or more wood chips.

Excellent thought Trace!

Eric

Eric, I would do the opposite. I would use the newspaper layer first. It will "suck down" when you wet it and will suffocate the weeds. Follow by a layer of cardboard to protect the newspaper from the wood chips and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Eric Hanson wrote:Robin,

I will keep that in mind.  How much straw did you use?

We used one flake of straw for the layer, or about 2-3 inches of compressed straw. If the bales don't separate out into flakes it makes laying out more difficult. Fluffed out it was 10-12 inches thick.

OK, so here is what I am strongly leaning towards.  This isn’t a perfect solution, but hopefully it drastically improves my current circumstances.

I think I am going to try to heavily smother the existing weeds (grasses) with layers of cardboard.  I would use newspaper but we don’t get a newspaper any longer and therefore actual newspaper material is pretty scarce.  We do, however, get plenty of shipping boxes and at least they can be put to good use.

I have actually used the cardboard-smother approach before and gotten very very good results.  The key has always been making sure there are no gaps in the cardboard where weeds could escape.  This time around I will have to take special care to not allow gaps.

I can probably enhance this by plopping down piles of wet leaves from my woods.  I could use these wet leaves to seal in any gaps.

At any rate, this is where I am starting—omitting of course the obvious need to redo my fencing—but not necessarily where I am ending.  By this I mean that I am still plenty open to suggestions.

Thanks for all the input and thanks again in advance!

Eric