A bed of leaf mulch – what next please? UPDATE

[weedkillerMember]

Hi everyone! I am so happy with my humble discoveries that I would like to share with you. In February I asked Charles if I could bury my beds with leaf mulch then with rotten manure. He told me to go ahead with it. On the allotment I was kindly reminded by people watching me burrying couch grass and other serious annual weed roots under a thick mulch of leaf, then a layer (turned out to be a few inches thick) of rotted manure. Now, when the weeds are supposed to come up through the mulch are slowely showing up in small weak seedlings. However, grass has been delivered to our site, so I am mulching the ground with grass cuttings, burrying the emerging weeds even further.

I am so happy that at the moment at least I dont have to de-weed much. In fact in some places I wanted to tidy up things by moving the soil to make pathways I found the couch roots as the same as when I burries them in Feb. Thanks Charles.

Then I went mad and have taking another plot! I have ran out of enerygy to dig out the couch grass (not very grassy) I am planning to put my plants where I want to plant (already in pots), cover them with bottle cloches and mulch around them and the rest of the bed with some manure (as I do not have access to much), rotted leaves and grass cuttings. As for the rest of the beds just grass cuttings and leaf mulch. Is this a good idea? Thanks.

[charlesModerator]

 Sounds good so far but don’t underestimate the couch whose roots can live for up to a year under thick mulches, and sooner or later you will need to be on the case with your trowel, assuming you want to be permanently rid of it, which is possible, I am in that situation now.

At least the new growth of couch grass, from under a deep mulch, is much weaker and more sporadic than from unmulched roots, giving you a better chance of removing shoots and starving roots. Leaf mulch and grass cuttings is ok if you are setting out larger plants, not ideal, may attract slugs of weather turns wet.

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