clearing perennial weeds organically

We have removed barren cherry trees from our reclaimed 'hidden orchard' and now want to create a vegetable garden using raised beds.

But the soil is infested with nettles and brambles as well as a network of roots remaining after tree stumps have been removed. How can this ground be turned into a weed free, productive garden?

I will clear a lot of it by hand, but digging perennial weeds from large areas of ground is hard, tiring and unpopular work.

And there are so many other, competing priorities that clearing all of this ground with mattock and garden fork is not an option. And using weedkillers won't be considered.

Some time ago, Garden Organic suggested an alternative method in their magazine.

They showed how an area infested with perennial weeds could be cleared by covering the ground with a layer of cardboard and weighing this down with organic matter.

The light is excluded from the perennial weeds and over time these die, allowing the gardener to plant through the mulch of organic matter into the soil below.

So, I'm embarking on an experiment.

I need large quantities of cardboard but friends are supplying this. More cardboard needed!!

I need large quantities of organic matter - and neighbours with stables are providing this.

Here you see two trailers of manure applied to a layer of cardboard.

The photo shows progress so far. It doesn't show the vast area still to cover!!

But as Chairman Mao told his followers before the long march:
'The longest journey begins with a single step'.

Weed free vegetable garden, here we come!!

yellow archangel

Yellow archangel (lamiastrum galeobdolon) has butter yellow flowers in spring. It is a plant of deciduous woodland and its presence is said to show that the woodland is very old. It s a member of the large family of labiates, all of which are loved by bees.

I first encountered it twenty years ago when surveying Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust's Treswell Wood near Retford. Its archangel name, appearance and its special significance as an indicator species of ancient woodland gave it an identity that a yellow flowering dead nettle (which it is) would not normally have.

During Easter we visited Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire and I was amazed to see this drift of yellow archangel. It was there in abundance along a woodland walk that contained some old trees but had none of the feel of an ancient wood.

It was my good luck to find detached stems of the plant on the path so I snaffled them and put them in water to root when I got home. The little stems are now in a pot in our plastic greenhouse.

But, we have a dilemma.

When I Googled 'yellow archangel' I discovered that, away from traditional settings and when let loose in gardens, it becomes an aggressive thug of a plant, even dominating ground elder.

It gives this photo of yellow archangel, gently snuggling up to a tree a quite different interpretation. There are no other plants around it and it looks to have smothered the opposition.

Now, we have an area that is dominated by ground elder, which itself is up there at the top of the league as a garden hooligan.

Do I nurture the yellow archangel and plant it to dominate the ground elder - or will I end up with two species of weed I can't control?

down in jungleland

Once upon a time there was a little green shoot.
'Look, horseradish' said the naive boy. 'How lucky I am'!

Several years later it had turned into a dense jungle that could not be eradicated by digging out. No matter how hard the boy tried. No sir!

'Roundup' said a gruff voice.

But the naive boy said 'No'!

'No, glyphosate' said another voice. But the naive boy said 'No'!.

He chopped off all the leaves and then covered the area with two thicknesses of plastic weighted with wood and heavy buckets.

'Lack of light will kill the horrid horseradish' he said. 'I truly believe in organic methods'. And he put a photo on his blog so the world could see whether he was truly naive or that organic methods worked.