[maddave]

I've got a large bed on the allotment, fenced by scaffold boards, which contains a number of raspberry canes, two blueberry bushes, some blackberry canes and a number of strawberry plants.  As this bed is quite large and the plants in it don't produce much leaf cover, it gets weeds a lot, mainly nettle and bind weed. I dont have a chance to get down the plot very often so looking for ways to keep the weeds down.  Ive cleared it as much as I can to date and it is weed free at the minute, but I know if left for a few weeks over the summer it will be teeming with weeds very soon!

I was going to put straw around the strawberries, but was thinking would it be worth covering the whole bed in a thick layer of straw as a mulch and weed suppressant, replacing it each year.  The only downside I could see is that weeds will just grow through it anyway and end up being a pain to remove when I could just hoe/remove them easily without the straw being everywhere.  Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks

[Trikidiki]

Your straw mulch will be ok for annual weeds but won't do much for nettles and bindweed. Regular doses of glyphosate are your only real answer if you cannot afford the time to do the job manually. If you have grass paths around the plot you could do with treating them with a broad-leaf weedkiller or nettles nd bidweed will creep in again from there.

[ilan]

I find that straw can bring in with it a lot of viable seeds I only use it on the potatoes near blight time so I can burn it all off or in the autum when the sprouting seeds are easily removed before replanting

[Beekissed]

Placing some newspaper or cardboard, then putting down a thick layer of wood chips may do the trick.  Even if you get a weed in that, it will pull out easily and require minimal work, if any.  As long as you keep the wood chip deep, you shouldn't seem much weeds. 

[Trikidiki]

Placing some newspaper or cardboard, then putting down a thick layer of wood chips may do the trick.  Even if you get a weed in that, it will pull out easily and require minimal work, if any.  As long as you keep the wood chip deep, you shouldn't seem much weeds.

I'd put my money on bindweed getting through. 

[Beekissed]

Not if it's thick enough.      If you leave it thin, it will come through...but guess what?  Even if it comes through, it pulls up just like a knife out of butter from those wood chips.  The roots are shallow there and easily pulled up...like these that grew where the chips were only an inch deep, without any layer of cardboard under them....I left these in the garden to see what would happen when they were well established and I went to pull them....



Easy...sooooo easy to pull up....and underneath was garden gold, black gold.





Covered that area with deeper chips and I haven't seen those weeds since....not a single weed in all of the garden since getting the chip layer to the right depth.



It's a better solution than spreading poison in the soils to kill a few weeds. 

[Trikidiki]

I can see that working if it is an incoming seed that has taken root. If you have an isolated plot then you have control over what is coming over the border but in a typical allotment scenario you have 12" of rough grass path between you and your neighbour and when it is roots the size of your finger tunneling their way through they don't tend to come up that easily, especially lesser bindweed which seems to have roots that go to the centre of the earth. Also it appears that the OP has existing bindweed infestation which would need to be cleared first especially if it is in the roots of his raspberries as any depth of mulch that will stop the bindweed here will probably stop his raspberries too.

[maddave]

Thanks all.

Just to be clear, over the last two years, I've dug and cleared the whole bed of as much bind weed root and nettles as I can find. It is lovely and clear at the moment, but I know that just to the left of the this bed, bordered by a paving stone path, is a grass patch which cars use to park on, and that has tonnes of nettles and bind weed in it!  It's regularly mowed, but if I leave this bed for any length of time, the nettles start to creep over and there is always one or two bits of bind weed which start to crawl up the raspberry support posts.

I was hoping to use straw as it's about £2 a bale round here, where as wood chips are quite expensive for the area that needs to be covered.

Maybe I'll just cover the stawberries and see how this goes this year compared to an uncovered part.
Thanks.

[AussieInFrance]

I claim no familiarity with the likes of bindweed but as to controlling invasions of creeping buttercup & couch, i can assert that a thick layer of straw will do the trick. It acts as a 'light excluder' depriving the weeds of light, without which they cannot thrive. The straw does need to be laid down thickly though, at the very least a  6" layer. It will settle down within a few days, and you may consider topping it up again.

I'm on very heavy clay which varies between being so claggy you can't work it to setting as hard as cement when dry  -  using straw as a mulch (but not exclusively) keeps the soil friable enough to plant into without the aid of a jackhammer. I also apply it to the edges of the potager and all paths, underlaid with corregated cardboard. Saves on having clay stick to the soles of my shoes and absolutely stops weeds growing in the pathways when you cover right up to the edges.  I also applied it over winter to keep the soil covered. There's nothing weeds enjoy more than bare earth so i'll continue with this method and perhaps may try a green manure next winter to see the difference. That will give the added advantage of more nitrogen into the soil in readiness for spring planting. The cold/frost will kill it off nicely so i won't need to dig it in. I follow a no-dig approach to preserve the soil structure as best i can, and i can't see the sense to encouraging earthworms if you're intent on macerating them with a rotovator.

This is the first year of gardening on clay and i can compare my plantings, which are well under way, while my neighbours still await the clay to be dry enough to work. There is great value in mulching with whatever organic matter you can obtain. This first year, starting with a substantial covering of couch and creeping buttercup, I layered with cardboard, straw, sheep/cow muck, coffee grounds, municipal shredded compost, vermicastings, ash and leaves. I'm pleased with the improved condition and see no reason for it not to continue as the organic content increases over time. There's no such thing as too much organic material for a healthy, productive garden.

[3759allen]

i use rabbit manure with a high content of straw, it does seem to help a lot with weeds, including nettles. unfortunately you'll never get rid of weeds completely, but mulching and regular weeding will make it more manageable every year.