Following on from our Rocket Gardener’s recent post about clearing land for her cottage garden, here are three popular crops that you can easily grow whilst clearing land of weeds.
Strawberries
This works really well if you want to smother weeds for a full year or two to really combat them. The strawberries will grow back the following year as well so you will be making the most of things while the weeds are being killed off.
Whether you decide to dig or simply cover weeds with compost, you then just need to lay a sheet of black polythene over the area. Then cut holes at about 30cm apart in rows and plant your strawberries. The black polythene will help the strawberries by keeping the soil nice and warm and by providing a protective layer between the soil and the fruit, which prevents the fruits from rotting. Whilst all this is going on, the weeds are starved of light and after a couple of years you will have a lovely, clear patch of land.
Potatoes
This is a good way of getting on top of weeds in an existing bed that has become a bit overrun with unwanted plants. It works because you will be earthing up the potatoes regularly as they grow, thus uprooting weeds and covering some of the smaller weeds with soil. The foliage of the potatoes also helps to provide ground cover, blocking the light to smaller weeds. Once you’ve then harvested your potatoes you can quickly plant new crops, but remember that you will need to hoe regularly to keep on top of things.
Pumpkins/Squash
This is the way that our Rocket Gardener is going to be doing things this season, and it’s a great way of smothering weeds between spring and autumn. It’s a good idea to start covering your plot now, before too many weeds manage to pop up. Again, cover a patch of land with black polythene or weed mesh and make holes to plant your pumpkin seedlings, approximately 1 metre apart. The nice thing with this method is that pumpkins and squashes spread quite a bit and cover up the black polythene, making it a little more aesthetically pleasing!