Growing spuds through a weed suppressant

Hi Greasehog! Welcome to the madhouse!!! lol  Are you talking weed suppresant here or black plastic?  different things.

I used the strong stuff terram 2 years ago, covered the area with it, then cut a small cross in the fabric where I wanted to plant my potato, the ground was soft as it had been rotavated, so I just dug a hole out with my bulb planter, dropped the potato in the hole and covered it up.  then carried on like that all over.

You don't earth up if the weed suppresant is thick as no light gets through, but the only place I got a few green spuds was where they grew too close to the cross, which I forgot to cover with a bit of soil.  Yields were pretty good, but got more slug damage than usual.  No weeds though!  So I was happy with them overall.

I did this last year with a black plastic sheeting I got from Tesco and Asda, I still got alot of green spuds so I think the thicker stuff might work better.   Slugs were also a problem.

I will certernally try again this year but I might add a couple of layers of cardboard underneath to help block the light.

I also grew sweetcorn throught the plastic with french beans at the bottom and it worked brilliantly, no weeding, good sweetcorn and the beans climbed up.  I tried it the year befor with squashes aswell (3 sisters) and none of them did well, but this year it was great and no slug damage???

I also tried it with onions and it didnt go well, slugs ate most of them and they didnt get very big

I did it with cabbages too and that went well only I realised I didnt like cabbage (I only like red pickled cabbage) but slugs were a problem again.

As you can guess, I dont like weeding.  I dont have much time as I have a 2 and 3 year old so the plastic worked well enough for me as my plot was only recently made and the beds I didnt cover were covered in grass and weeds regrowing.  I am going to experiment this year with cardboard aswell.

Just had a thought.... what if i cut a slightly bigger hole for the onions that i'll be growing that way they'll get plenty of room and light to grow and i'll only have a small area to weed???

My concern with that would be that I think onions dislike root disturbance and by pulling out the couch grass roots which grow through the open squares in the fabric, you may disturb those roots.

However, I haven't tried this method of growing onions so this may not be a particularly big issue.