Permaculture

[KJessi]

I had no idea where to put this topic. Did a search but only came up with one post by Nicos sharing a link.

Anyone practice it? I've been interested for years, since I used to travel a lot and it was heartbreaking leaving the garden to mostly look after itself. So much dead and wasted harvest even if there were a few occasional grateful pickers.

I've planted a lot of perennials, fruit trees and shrubs, but I'd love to do more. I met this older couple a few years back, who was selling their house, and they were travellers like me and he'd basically planned the garden around permaculture, including a pond which he'd planted carefully to allow for natural filtration etc.

It was fascinating, a lot over my head, but it was beautiful and so low maintenance.

My question though - weeds! How to combat them and still allow for self-seeding etc. I have sorrel, spinach, chard, mustard, arugula, that all never need sowing again due to self seeding, but they need bare soil for that. Which weeds love too.

I'm guessing there's not much I can do, but hoping you might have ideas to share. On weed reduction and also any other ideas of permaculture.

[Andraste]

I wouldn't class myself as a permaculture practitioner, but I do try to apply some of the principles & anything to reduce weeds is always a good thing

I'd suggest mulching is probably the best way to go.

You might want to explore allelopathic plants. I'm convinced planting french marigolds on our boundary stopped the couch grass encroaching from the path outside our plot boundary when we put them there a few years back (it wasn't the plan, just spare plants & an empty bit of ground) so I'm going to try this again this year.

They also provided good ground cover which suppressed the weeds, were low maintenance (just left to their own devices really) but as an annual they died back with the frost & they didn't self-seed so, thinking of your set-up, a similar annual wouldn't get in the way of the things you want to self-seed coming through.

I'd suggest nasturtiums or calendula as a good annual ground cover for suppressing weeds but as they self-seed so readily, I'm thinking they might out-muscle the plants you do want to self-seed.

I'm not sure there's much to be done for the real hardy perennial weeds like creeping buttercup, bindweed, marestail etc other than get as much of them out by the root as you can as often as you can.

I'll be interested in hearing other members ideas too

[rary]

I dont practice permaculture either in the garden but as I also dont like weeding all the time as I am a bit lazy, so last year I planted trailing nasturtium through part of my flower bed and those plants having large leaves definitely suppressed the weeds, as well as giving something edible, though might be to similar in taste to the rocket or as you call it arugula but the leaves are that bit broader so casts a bigger shadow evidently its to early to see if they have self seeded
That was an interesting comment about the French marigolds Andraste I had come across a recommendation to use Mexican marigolds for suppressing couchgrass but will give the French marigolds a try.

[Andraste]

I'm certainly no expert of the allelopathic plants but I think some thought does need to be given to what other plants surround them so that you don't inadvertently check their growth. My instinct is that I've planted French Marigolds with other stuff like Tomatoes in the past with no detrimental effects to them - but other allelopathic plants can have quite a significant impact (like Walnut trees) so please do have a read around for more/better information than my ramblings

[rary]

Now I will need to find out what allelopathic means, I will check it out when I hunt out what plants curtail the growth of others

[Andraste]

Basically plants that release chemicals that other plants don't like

[Andraste]

Mothawk posted an interesting link on the chitchat thread about marigolds & couchgrass today rary

[KJessi]

Re that link: the 3 marigolds researched are tagetes minuta, tagetes erecta and tagetes patula. Commonly known respectively as Mexican Marigold, African Marigold and French Marigold.

I'll try all three - fingers crossed x