New raised beds - clay soil and ground elder
Jason Woodcock
Posts: 2
I am creating a large raised bed veg plot within an existing fruit cage. I moved to the house last spring and the fruit cage had been neglected and full of ground elder. During the winter I have removed the existing strawberry plants and will remove the old fruit canes. I am about to put in a number of 9" deep raised beds. I have removed as much ground elder as I can find but just know it is still in the soil waiting for me. The existing soil is clay based and needs improving hence the raised beds. I will put in weed matting between the beds and wonder if worth putting under the beds as well
Any advice please on how to stop the ground elder ruining all this work ? Will 9" deep beds prevent it growing ? Will the weed matting help, should I put it inside the beds as well ?
Help please. I really don't like the thought of using chemicals.
Posts
I cleared a bed covered in ground elder 3 or 4 years back simply by digging it over and removing as many of the roots as possible and then assiduously removing any that grew back over the next year or so. This was quite easy as the bed had been dug over so it was easy to remove new ground elder growth. The bed has now been free of ground elder for over a year.
If it's a vegetable bed then you will be regularly weeding anyway - that should be sufficient to keep the ground elder under control and weaken it to the point it gives up. I don't like the idea of putting a membrane underneath, unless it's something biodegradeable like cardboard or a thick layer of paper.
We created a raised bed on top of the edge of some grass last year - not exactly the lawn, just the scrubby edge near the garden wall. There was ground elder and comfrey in the whole area which we weeded by hand as much as we could.
We used homemade compost and some decent topsoil that we got free from Gumtree to create a bed about 15" deep, and lo and behold, both the comfrey and the ground elder are showing themselves. I'm hoping to keep on top of it by hand weeding if possible as I want to use part of the bed for veg and part for shrubs, but it is frustrating.
My guess is that you will have the same experience. Our soil where the raised bed went was pretty compacted but not too heavy, whereas the soil in the bed now is quite fine and loose, so dead easy for those pesky but persistent weeds to work their way through.
Good luck!
Don't put weed membrane under the beds. It rots eventually but in the meantime it actually makes it harder to get weeds out that grow on top of it, because the roots twine into the fabric and then you can't get them out without breaking
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Thank you, my wife has volunteered to remove as much of the weeds as possible but we need to wait until the soil has dried out a little, we may just leave the beds empty this year and keep weeding until satisfied we are on top of it. Point taken on the matting , my wife agreed on this too as she has problems in the flower garden with old matting that was put down by the previous owners.