Over the last couple of years I’ve been trying different things out, but my conditions are far from laboratory, so nothing conclusive.
Another user reported that synthetic black groundcover is easy and suppresses weeds well, but is bad for the soil in the long term, as you’re not adding any new organic matter. I’ve heard it also chokes out the activity of earthworms etc., not to mention it’s difficult to apply fertilizer.
A couple of years ago I used a large number of flattened cardboard boxes overlapping and as a cheap biodegradable groundcover instead of mulch. It’s seem to work very well for me. One concern I never determined was if it alowed pest bugs to multiply underneath, as they were protected from birds etc. there seemed to be an aweful lot of earwigs, slugs etc. under it.
Another similar solution that seemed to work very well was to use large thick heavy straw mats (tatami).
They are used a lot in housing here, and are quite expensive, but people throw them out when they are replaced. I had a whole bunch when I reformed our house, so I lay them around the trees in place of mulch, and they worked really well and are almost completely decomposed now after a couple years. They seem to be better than the cardboard boxes because they got really soggy and heavy and pushed into the ground, so there weren’t air gap’s for critters to get under. When I lifted them up it was kind of damp and I saw lots of earthworms. They also didn’t need any kind of securing as they were so heavy.
I also tried regularly cutting the grass right down to the dirt, and leaving the cuttings where they fall. Quite a bit of work at my location, and I’m wondering if the weeds are sucking all the nutrients out and competing anyways with my plants despite being cut.
Currently I am just hand pulling weeds in a small radius around my trees, and occasionally cutting the grass outside of that. I’m having a lot of problems with moles and other insects, maybe because of the long-ish grass available for hiding.
Something I started doing a bit this year was using Glysophate. Easiest and cheapest option. But I’m not sure what long-term effect this has on the soil, or more importantly on our health as we eat the things that come out of this ground and I get a lot of exposure to anything in the garden as I’m working in it a lot .
Sounds like the tatami are working well. Can you get more? I’ve tried to get some of them from my husband’s aikido dojo when they do the sword demonstrations, but it never pans out.
Is there a specific problem you are trying to solve, or just open discussion?
You can have a look at Goal / Goal Tender herbicide.
Dax
a layer of newspaper and wood chip mulch works great at keeping the weeds at bay. i get mine at a firewood company down the road. could get some from the local arborists as they have to haul the chips away to a landfill. they would be happy to dump a pile for you. every spring i fertilize, put down newspaper 5 thick then top dress with 3in. of chips. makes wonderfull black soil as it breaks down. barely have to water too. just keep a 3in ring chip free around the trunk of your tree. works good for my cane fruit too as new shoots can only come up in the row. any that try to come out in between rows are smothered.
Like moose71, I use wood chips. In the long run, there are plants in nature that are suited for being groundcovers and suited to your climate. I don’t think that grass is a good option under fruit trees. Like someone said, they suck up the water and nutrients and don’t have deep roots to build up your top soil. Diversity is better at fighting bugs and giving you a diverse microbiome that you will need to digest and absorb the nutrients in your fruit, as I see it. Many weeds are edible and useful. Herbs work great too.
John S
PDX OR
There’s a lot going on in my garden, and I’m not sure what’s causing what exactly. I have a lot of pest problems, and also discovered moles have been wreaking havoc the last year or two. So wondering what other people have found works really well for groundcover.
Tatami can be a bit difficult for me to get as well, and they’re more difficult to work with than something like wood chips. Especially the seams, weeds would explode wherever they could get a gap. I couldn’t find a source of cheap wood chips locally.
I have an endless source of cardboard next-door, and it’s pretty easy to work with, once you get it tacked down.
The nicest thing was not having to cut the grass all year, nor water as often.
I put my new grafts this year in a raised bed. I put an inch layer of dried grass clippings (made sure they were dried to limit the nitrogen and also the heat that would be produced with fresh clippings) and then planted watermelon on top around the grafts. The grafts have done beautifully, and the grass clippings/watermelon helped keep the soil nice and cool and moist. The grass clippings haven’t rotted yet…I imagine they’ll last the year, and when they do rot, I’m sure they’ll leave some nice OM behind. I haven’t noticed any Bermuda grass growing up through my clippings, like I have with the wood chips in my other beds. (Bermuda grass is our biggest “weed”.) Plus, the watermelon helps me efficiently use the space to produce something and the leaves keep the soil and the roots cool in the summer.
Just my $.02.
My preference is for cardboard covered with six inches of wood chips, but getting sufficient quantity of either is difficult even here. Can you get pine needles? Those do a great job and look great, and studies show they don’t mess up pH like people say. I’m trying to think of waste products that might be plentiful in Japan, but don’t know enough to come up with anything but stereotypes, so I’ll stop.
But don’t give up on the cardboard just cause you see bugs underneath. Part of mulch’s strength is that it hosts so much life. Gives preditors a habitat.
chopped straw works pretty good also. if you have a unused field nearby, cut the tall grass with a scythe and let it dry. chop it up with big scissors then place around your trees over your newspaper. i used to do this when i first started planting. works good and its free. also a cover crop of white clover as a ground cover works well too. food for bees and is a nitrogen fixer. till under in the fall will add green manure. reseed in spring.
White clover is a good idea. I think it looks nice, too. It might not build soil as fast as a heavy mulch, but would be less work.
yep. and it fixes nitrogen in the soil also. doesn’t get too high and can handle being walked on. the u pick berry farm in town has all his rows covered in white clover. and they’re covered w/ bees! get the seed thats inoculated with the proper bacteria so it goes to work for you quicker. i like to rotate from sawdust to clover every other year.
Thanks guys. My first year I hiked into the mountains to get several bags of Pineneedles. I also collected as much grass is I could get from cutting to use as mulch. It was OK, but it was nowhere near enough. Additionally, in the summer the weeds here grow like a jungle, literally. Even the thick to tatami mats, before the seasons end had several weeds that had somehow poked through them. Wood chips, Pineneedles, hay, etc. would work well if I could get them by the truckload. But I’m not sure where to get that stuff, and I got a feeling it would be a bit expensive here.
I guess I’m kicking around whether to buy an expensive new grass cutter, do more mulching, or just hand pull weeds around the tree base a bit and let things go pretty wild elsewhere.
Not really laboratory conditions, so not sure if I’m helping or hurting thing sometimes.
You can always pull the stuff up temporarily… Makes it easy to do things like plant cover crops actually.
Ouch. Those are some persistent weeds.
Just a wild thought-in the “if you can’t beat em, join em” style: have you thought about growing “weeds” that work for you?
For example: I have heard of people growing comfrey around their trees. Comfrey roots go down a long way into the soil, supposedly allowing it to pick up nutrients other plants don’t get to. They can grow very tall and wide. You can go around to your comfrey a few times a year and whack it down, and use the leaves as mulch. The nutrients the comfrey got through its roots will be transferred to the soil around your tree as the comfrey decomposes.
I had just read about that a few months ago, so that’s why I know it, but something along those lines might be useful. Or perhaps growing a cover crop under your trees that would help crowd out obnoxious weeds?
I think you might have to try a multi-pronged approach since regular mulch doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.
you’re in japan. what do they do with the rice straw after harvesting? seems that would be a good cheap source of mulch. 
i also use comfrey for fertilizer. its great stuff! i chop the leaves and put in a 5 gal. pail with holes in the bottom, then put that in another 5 gal pail put a rock on top of the comfrey to press down on it . in a few weeks you’ll have a dark liquid in the bottom pail. mix that 5 to 1 and water your plants with it .
How much space are you trying to manage? Cover crops may be the way to go if it’s too much to mulch but still small enough to plant.
I haven’t found any natural mulch that will permanently control all weeds completely. But several layers of cardboard covered with wood chips or similar slows them down and makes it easier to pull them up.
Just for reference we fight Bermuda grass, Johnson grass, poke weed, and bindweed as our worst weeds.
I planted micro clover last year in part of my orchard. I did only one spot as the seed is not cheap. It did grow well and the difference between the clover planted area and the none planted was impressive. It did choke out many weeds. This nice thing about this clover is that is stays very short so mowing is minimal.
I plant comfrey around all my fruit trees. It’s very popular among permaculturalists. I hack it 3 times a year or more and it’s free fertilizer. It is full of nutrients because it has very deep roots and biodiversifies the soil. I also intentionally plant edible weeds like plantain, purslane, bitter cress, black scorzonera, curly mallow, false dandelion, sow thistle and spiny sow thistle. I also just leave the dandelion. That way, I let the soil regenerate itself, and I get all you can eat organic vegetables. They grow like weeds!. Different ones pop up at different times of the year. I do this in addition to wood chips each year.
John S
PDX OR
i use comfrey too. i have about 20 plants around the property. i chop and drop the leaves in early summer and top dress with mulch. i also make the liquid to mix with water to fertilize my fruit plants. much easier than hauling manure. love comfrey!