I created a beautiful nodig vegetable bed this year consisting of the general layers of compost/cow manure/leafs etc.
Now i have ended up with lots of weeds, originating from the weed cowered pile of well burned cow manure i think. M y idea was to cower the bed with a top layer fresh straw to keep the weeds back.
Now i have another problem from the straw layer, snails and slugs eating the small vegetables seedlings.
I understand that the best thing to do is to remove the straw but what to do with all the weeds.
Should i get another top layer material? Or what to do?
Hello Stamel.
Yes, slugs are a problem under mulches of straw and less-decomposed materials.
So to be clear of the weeds you needed to have raked or hoed them when small, or use a trowel to scuff the surface and disturb them so that their roots dry out on any day of sun and wind.
But maybe they are now too big for that, so the best method is to pull them all out, then to put them on your compost heap. Weeds pull out easily from the surface compost (whether it is originally from cow manure or whatever) and after pulling them you will be impressed to have a clean surface quite quickly, without adding any more mulches.
It looks from your first description that you have some compost on the surface and that is the mulch to feed and protect soil.
Yes it looks “bare” until you sow and plant, but its still a protective mulch.
