Help needed please!

[Two_Sheds]

Don't be tempted to rotavate your nettles you will simply propagate them by chopping them up.

That depends on what variety of urtica they are.

I add the fat yellow roots to the compost heap and they don't regrow. Small annual nettles I just pull and leave on the soil surface (they're full of nitrogen).

I leave a small clump of nettles in the sun for butterflies. If we eradicate all nettles, we'll eradicate our lovely flutterbies too

[Two_Sheds]

if you have 200 square meters of nettles and bindweed to deal with, then good luck using your 'cardboard' method ...

It actually does work though, and the card improves the soil as it rots down, and the moisture under the card increases the worm population. RoundUp, on the other hand, kills worms.

I often get called out to deal with gardens of council houses that have weeds .... tall weeds (sometimes as tall as me) covering the whole garden .... they want 'fast' results

I used to work for a firm that did garden "clearance". It consisted of lots of power strimming & mowing, and it looked great afterwards ... for about a week. Then all the weeds grew back, because the roots weren't tackled.

Whatever method you choose to clear the weeds, Mucca, you MUST NOT leave any bare soil, for weeds will soon take over again. Nature doesn't have any bare soil, it's not natural.

Clear a bit, and immediately plant it up with something ground-covering. Squash are good, so are potatoes. They shade out a lot of weeds.

The bits you can't tackle immediately, cover with cardboard, or wet newspapers. Be inventive, ask at shops & neighbours. do a bit at a time.

Whatever else, DO NOT let any of your weeds go to flower/seed. If nothing else, deadhead the flowers, so they don't send millions of weed seeds off all over your garden.

[starloc]

I think shops should be banned from selling weedkiller as people use too much of it , there is no need to use it 99% of the time as people could just pull the plant out if they really need to, nobody who uses there garden regularly should need it

People should leave the weeds within reason, most of them can be used for something and all of them are good for insects

I do draw the line at some levels of weeds, I have never used weekdkiller till this year and I am just about to spray a garden with it as I just cant do the work required to clear it of a particular couple of weeds every two weeks or so, Once under control a bit I will then do it without weedkiller , im not planning to use it again , mainly due to the fact that if used the way people do it poisons the ground water.
This stuff grows back in 2 to 3 weeks and I have them growing at 3 to 5 inch apart, I want to keep some as it doesnt spread that much, this was planted by the previous owner.
We have 2000sqm of southern european elder and clematis vitalba, ive been strimming it to the floor for a year and it always comes back , the roots are too deep to pull out as its been grown for 20 years, and if they chop up they multiply , the worst is the hard wood elderberry tree with 2 to 3 meter new shoots every year, Ive given up and I bought industrial strength glyphospate for a attack this year

Some times i say it is ok to use it , but only if really needed as a last resort, not as a quick fix

Theres nothing worse than seeing people spraying walls and things every week with it , living in fear of tiny plants damaging the walls , or idiots from the council spraying off a tractor at 10mph on the pavement every few weeks.....
One council worker stopped outside our house the other day and walked up the house path and killed my nettles....when asked why he came on our property he said we were not allowed to grow them as cultivating weeds such as nettles is dangerous and illegal!

This is what I have to deal with and ive been chopping it down every couple of months for a year, goes back to that size every time , I tried the old lino from the house on it and it just went through it

[Mucca]

i. Stage one underway!

[veggiechicken]

Well done Mucca!! Keep at it

[PyreneesPlot]

Good job and well done!

Can I make one small suggestion? When you drop your spade to the ground, turn it over to avoid injurying yourself on the sharp end if you stumble into it. Or the comedy rake handle in face moment ...