Spring is here! It may not be time to actually plant the garden yet but it’s not too early to start preparing. Last year we tried something in our home garden that you may find useful to try for yourself.
Growing organically means that our hands and our garden hoe act as our weed killer. And when springtime comes and we’re busy growing plants for other people’s gardens, it’s tough to find time to pull weeds. If you find yourself a little too pressed for time as well, perhaps this is something that you’ll find helpful.
I’m talking about weed fabric. If you are big on gardening ambition but slight on weeding ambition, try this product and thank us later. It’s not difficult to use, it doesn’t take that much time to install and your weeding will be cut down by 90%!
It’s best to prepare the soil before laying the fabric. If you can’t prep the soil, you’ll have another chance to amend it upon planting. To apply the fabric, lay it down tight until you can hammer in the fabric staples. It doesn’t take much wind to make the fabric ripple so it’s important to have something around to weigh down the corners. Once the fabric is stapled down tight you are ready for planting. When that time comes, cut about a 2′ circle in the fabric for each plant. We prefer to keep the planting hole slightly more shallow than the ground. This enables for water to collect much like watering a large flower pot. And your amendments won’t run off as much when watering.
We recommend amending the soil with any single component or combination of compost, humus and earthworm castings. Other highly recommended additions are azomite and mycorrhizae. These will really get the biology activated in your soil! Biology breeds other biology and once your soil is alive your plants will thrive. Do you know what else loves healthy soil? Weeds. So it’s worth consideration to not give weeds the chance to multiply. Gardening is a labor of love, and it’s about enjoying the fruits of that labor, not weeding every other week.
-OH team
