Thick weeds and grass in my flowerbeds

n.d.os

A question about digging and preparing flowerbeds in my garden. Over the last few years, I've dug out a few flower beds in my front and back gardens. I have quite a large exposed garden on all sides and I would best describe the soil as grey and marly. It holds a lot of water in winter and in the summer the soil is dense, dry, and difficult to work with. Over the years I've struggled to grow anything in the garden except grasses. I have quite a lot of Stipa in the front garden and they appear to thrive there. All of the flowerbeds are dug at ground level and I maintain the edges once a year using an edging tool but it's a real pain. Over the years I've added quite a lot of compost, fresh soil from local landscapers, and wood chippings. The soil is definitely healthier but I still struggle to grow anything and in the summer the entire surface of the flowerbeds is covered in thick deep rooted weeds and grass. In my opinion, I think my prep is bad as I have no trouble with weeds in any of the raised flower beds around the back of my garden that were dug by a professional gardener.

A few questions.

• In wet areas is it best to raise your flowerbeds to encourage growth?
• Should I use a digger to properly dig out flowerbeds to stop weeds and grass from growing back in the flowerbeds or is it just the nature of the soil I'm dealing with?
• Is there anything I can use to stop weeds from growing if I simply remove all of the plants, lay a base layer of wood chippings, and focus on growing trees in my garden in these beds? I quite like this style of clean, manageable landscaping.
• Why do I see so many gardens that don't struggle with heavy weeds and grass buildup? Again, is it just good prep when first digging out the beds?

Thanks in advance.

macraignil

I have read that raising the level of places you are planting can help with growth. Even planting on a mound can help an individual plant.

Weeds growing is something most gardeners have to deal with and there are a variety of wild seeds in most soils that are ready to sprout when soil is disturbed. Using a digger could even make the situation worse if other simple weed control methods like removing the weed plants before they set their own seed are not adhered to. In my own garden I prefer to regard some of these wild plants as not weeds but wild flowers that I let grow. Fox glove, chamomile, dead nettle, clover and bird's foot trefoil would be examples I regularly see here.

Weed plants like all others need light to grow. One technique you might consider could be sheet mulching with cardboard to kill off the plants you don't want. The cardboard should be overlapped so no gaps are there for the plants beneath to easily grow through and after a few months with no light most will be dead. The cardboard naturally decays in the soil. Wood chips or compost on top of this cardboard layer can sustain small plants and as the cardboard decays these plants can root into the soil underneath and as long as you don't let the roots get exposed by the compost or wood chip breaking down they can go on to grow into healthy mature garden plants. In some cases of putting in larger plants it may make sense to cut into the soil through the mulch layer so the roots can get to natural soil more quickly. Just wood chips on their own are too permeable to weed growth to stop them making their way to the surface again unless you can put in a very deep layer, but I have used a layer of manure about 25cm thick with no cardboard to get good results in no dig cultivation.

It is not just good prep in removing all weed plants including their roots that makes weed plant control possible but constant vigilance to pick out the developing weed plants as they sprout. They are much easier to control when they are small and can simply be plucked out of the ground with finger and thumb but failing this I still need to take out a few I miss with a trowel fairly regularly. Having something growing on the garden space so there is no free space for the weed plants to settle make weeding easier as does the use of good mulches on any bare patches.

Happy gardening!

SnowyMuckish

It sounds maybe like you might have heavy clay soil? Try to figure out what type of soil you have and maybe do a ph test to determine what kind of plants suit your garden, as the saying goes’ ‘right plant, right place’, in other words don’t waste money on something that doesn’t suit your site. It take years and years to improve soil I think. I invested heavily in drainage chips, sand, bark chips, compost and manure, multiple ton bags, to improve drainage in our garden and spent years of adding very thick mulch.

To help with weeds as macraignil mentioned mulching is the best way to deal with weeds. But it needs to be very thick. I usually do a ‘big weeding’ in spring before mulching, one mid season and one at the end of the season. No method will be weed free, it’s just part and parcel of gardening.

I had extremely heavy waterlogged clay but now I manage to grow drainage loving Mediterranean plants like Salvia. Mound planting (as you mentioned above) and a serious amount of drainage chips helped me achieve this. But it was a very slow process that I worked on gradually over the years to keep the cost down.

Another option for weeds is ground cover plants. Basically anything that spreads itself thickly along the ground.

n.d.os

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120412459#Comment_120412459

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I know I will always have to deal with dreaded weeds, I just seem to get more of them in my garden than I've experienced in the past in other gardens. I don't think the soil helps and raising would probably help. I pile on the wood chips regularly and it does help but once thick grass keeps growing through it and its well beyond just being able to manage a few times a year. I'm going to try a few things this summer including lining the beds with bricks to stop the grass growing into the beds. I bought an oscillating hoe last summer and it's great but I still need to figure out a way to limit the beds to more manageable weeds. I still think i'm doing something wrong, possibly not digging the beds deep enough when first planning them and roots are still present under the new soil.

n.d.os

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120413055#Comment_120413055

I've established that I have heavy clay soil without even doing a soil test so I am limited to grasses. In the raised beds around the back I can be a little bit more adventurous but this summer I will be removing a lot of the plants that aren't doing well and planting more trees in the larger beds. I've good access to barkchip locally so the combination of trees and a bark chip base will be fine as a lot of my beds run in long lines around the perimeter of the house.

SnowyMuckish

There’s lots of things that like clay, roses thrive in it!