As I didn't have as much time to dig my allotment last Winter as I'd hoped, for this year I'm just using the beds as left by the previous tenant. Unfortunately this means that a large proportion of my small plot is taken up by 'grass' paths, which are doing a grand job of both wasting land and keeping the weeds going. I put 'grass' in inverted commas there because I took a good look at them when I was cutting the longest bits yesterday and I reckon that although there may possibly be a minute amount of ordinary grass there, most of it is made up of a grand collection of horrible perennial weeds: they really are mostly made of couch grass, docks, dandelions, creeping buttercup and the dreaded horsetail.
Clearly, they've got to go, but what should my strategy be? I'd prefer to sort them out in small sections (because compacted clay with lots of roots in is hard work!) but I don't want to damage the plants that are in the beds. The options I can think of are:
- Skim off the top as best I can and bury it. I'm guessing this would have no effect on the weeds, though.
- Skim off the top, try to remove the earth from the mass of roots (not sure how - it's pretty heavy clay), and dispose of them.
- Skim off the top, stack turves in a pile. I tried to do this with one path this year and have managed to create a mound of healthy couch grass, even with the bit that was under supposedly weedproof membrane.
- Glyphosate, then dig over. I'd rather not use weedkiller unless I have to, and I'm worried about accidentally killing my veg, though.
Any advice?