Roots in raised beds question

If you're going to sow root crops, then you definitely need to get rid of weed roots.

For other crops, it's still a good idea to clear out all the weeds as you'll only be pulling them through the whole season, which is a huge waste of valuable time when it could have been tackled more easily before planting time.

Bit drastic I know but how about removing the soil and bunging down some weedproof membrane?  (not forgetting to replace soil).   Cheers,   Tony.

Spoke to a chap today and he said they were couch grass roots, so spent an hour and a half digging just one bed and removed a huge amount but i'll be digging through it a couple more times just to be on the safe side.

As long as you can take out the majority of couch roots, you're okay to grow crops, but the couch will simply spread again if you don't make the effort.

Personally, I'd rather do one really good cleaning out and be couch free for a long time. I did this 3 years running in my own garden beds and now I don't get any couch roots in the actual beds, just all around as they're very invasive and determined.

My mother didn't get around to taking couch roots out of her potatoes one year and we harvested potatoes with couch roots going right through the tubers and out the other side! Had to use up those first and we had quite a lot that year so she's never let that happen again.

I've been going over an area of lotty which has been under black sheet mulch for years. The surface is beautifully clear of top growth but gently probing to look for roots has yielded yards of dandelion roots.  It's a good job I didn't just trust that there was nothing there and rotovate the whole thing.

I don't dig or rotovate so I won't be chopping them up.  I fished them out gently, trying to follow each one.  It does take a while but it's worth it