Hi everyone. We live on a hectare on outskirts of Martinborough. Dry in summer and tres wet in winter. Moved from Welly about 3 years ago and very happy out here. We have just planted .25 acre of garlic and panicking about how we will control the weeds without spraying. My first attempt will be to mulch the rows with peastraw and plant the walkways with a cover crop which we can walk down - I'm thinking mustard firstly for the colour and secondly for ease of digging in at end of season. Of course there is also the green crop benefits too. Any suggestions on how to manage such a volume of bare earth would be greatly appreciated. I have gardened for many years but this is our first attempt on a bigger, unmeccanised scale.
Welcome! I think 1/4 acre of garlic would just about keep us in garlic for the year... [:0][:0]
I would also be interested in others' ideas for mulching a large area to keep weeds down, as I've got that on the cards for the winter work list as well.
Hi Babushla, peastraw is very expensive, if it were me I'd purchase those rolls of weed mat from the red shed, not the plastic kind but the other one more like a fabric and run it down the rows anchoring it down with river stones or something similar. I used it in my veggie garden and it worked well for ages, you could do double thickness also, lovely to walk on creases a bit but if you want to keep your walkways in the same place it would be brilliant and no weeding, also you can't beat raised beds.
GK
Ground up trees, in the form of newspaper and cardboard cartons, is a fairly good way. The inks used in NZ no longer have a heavy metal base, so there is little risk of pollution from that. Hold the paper and board down with vegetation that you want to decompose into the soil.
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