weedy groundcover

Is there any value in creating a groundcover with weeds?

In my vegetable garden, speedwells grow quite well. They would make a nice ground cover.
They are self seeding annuals.
Now I am just weeding, the soil is quite bare, I know that is not really good.
But the more tedious weeds like grass and buttercups have seriously declined in number.
I have no mulch either. I am not keen on buying my mulch.
I grow my vegetables in rows. I was wondering, suppose I would actually sow speedwells as a ground cover.
They are pretty blue flowers. It looks pretty nice. Whenever I would plant something. I could cut off a row of speedwells so my vegetables seeds could grow there.
They may grow slower since there would be some competition with the remaining speedwells within the row.
I would not mind as long as they would grow taller.
It would solve the bare soil problem and the ground cover would suppress the growth of other weeds.
I know there are some edible ground covers, but I am not sure they would actually be that good in this rather poor soil... or be worth harvesting.
I am not really trying to make a very productive vegetable garden, just something that would work.
My initial idea was to buy some edible perennials and quite a few edible self seeding annuals, like amaranth, wild onions and such.
I did not have that many seeds to start with, so I am planting some rows, hoping they would be self seeding into next year, while I keep weeding to give it a chance.
I have my doubts about it. I am guessing weeds would actually take over again, whenever I would stop weeding. That is where the idea came from to actually sow a ground cover weed.
But I have my doubts about that idea as well.

I was cultivating a local groundcover in one of my gardens to good effect for years until my sister weeded it out when she used that bed for her plants last year.  I have taken it back and am very grateful that she's so bad at weeding. It is slowly coming back.  

It served all the purposes of a mulch and was my most popular bee plant for most of the year.  Bees little saddle bags were always stuffed to overflowing with pollen when they worked it. I think that makes it better than a mulch though there are strong arguments for the support of mycelium fungi growth that some traditional mulches supply.

If people had a general idea of where you are growing they might be able to better understand how speedwell would work in your location.   In my garden I have never seen it big enough to be a mulch, but a lot of plants that struggle in Central Texas do much better in different climates

I am in Belgium, zone 7, I think. Summers can be very dry but very wet as well. The soil is pretty heavy, it's loam but without much humus. The speedwells are doing pretty good by themselves already, they are forming a dense groundcover in my cold frame, but they also pop up in my garden. I am not so sure they would manage to form a dense groundcover in my vegetable garden. They soil there is poorer but they certainly do manage to grow in it.

Thanks for your reply.

Welcome to the forum!

I looked up speedwell as it is not a plant that I am familiar with.  The creeping speedwell reminds me of a plant that I would like to use as a ground cover.

I feel that using that plant as a ground cover is a great idea.  That sounds like a great experiment to me.

I hope you will let us know how this turns out.

Well, I think I'm going to start weeding selectively with my hoe.  Clearing the grass and buttercups, some broad-leaved dock and others. And the speedwells, yellow sorrel and dandelions, I'm going to keep them. The dandelion leaves can be eaten in pancakes, the yellow sorrel can be made into a drink. The speedwells and yellow sorrel make a good groundcover. That way I don't have to buy any seed and a groundcover may gradually form.
I think I have veronica persica or common-field speedwell in my garden. It likes a fertile loam soil but it tolerates poor soils. That explains why it is thriving in my cold frame. I have better soil in there.

I am glad I have sparked your interest a bit, thanks for your input.