Clearing deadnettle

[liz]

hi, has anyone around here had any experience of clearing deadnettle – more specifically, yellow deadnettle or archangel?

I’m hoping to graduate from growing veg in pots to rejuvenating my mum’s long neglected veg patch this year, and wondered whether 6in of mushroom compost would be enough to eradicate it, or whether come June I’d just be looking at a very pretty mini field of expensively fed yellow weeds.

We’ve a fair amount of cardboard too, though not sure if enough for whole of planned patch as well as paths. I could add some black poly cover to unplanted bits, but hoped to get some salad, shallots, potatoes and peas and beans in this spring)

(there’s other weeds too, from brambles (have experience with those and, crucially, a pickaxe) to yarrow, grass, mallow, sorrel and a spiky seeded, rosette thing that I think is a kind of buttercup but it yields to my weeding knife.)
As far as I can gather, the deadnettle’s a kind of mint, the roots certainly seem to spread in the same way (and it’s clay based soil, which makes digging out that sort of root tricky, though the garden had decades of leafmould mulches before it was neglected, so the top layer’s nice to work)

[charles]

Liz I would lay thick cardboard first then the compost. You need light exclusion for the whole area, paths too. And keep pulling any regrowth until parent roots expire.

[Author]

Posts