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  • From: Steve Diver <steved AT ncat.org>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Weeds in paths
  • Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:18:42 -0600

Hello Andy -

Cultivation, flaming, weed eating, living mulch are
some options, sometimes used in various combinations.

It depends on your field layout and equipment options,
and what you are growing in the plasticulture beds.

I've seen plasticulture beds with wide pathways that
allow a tractor to make a pass with cultivation baskets
and sweeps to control weeds, but other times the
in-between pathways are too narrow.

I've found that a couple passes with a wheel hoe
or cultivator are sufficient to get a crop up to canopy,
but later-on one or two passes with a weed eater
or DR Weeder is necessary to knock down emerging
weeds.

I've seen in-between pathways covered in a thick
layer of straw mulch, spread off the back of a trailer
or spread by a forage wagon.

Paul Sansone in Oregon covered 10-15 acres of beds
with geotextile weed barrier mulch, and then used a
more permeable weed barrer to cover the in-between
pathways as well. That is the largest scale example
of weed barrier in action that I've heard about. He
emphasized that you can drive tractor tires right
over the weed barrier in pathways.

For a practical article on Sansone's system of biodynamic
cut flower production using weed barriers, compost, cover
crops, tractors, spading machine, drip irrigation, see:

Sansone, Paul. 2005. Biodynamic flower production:
Demystifying the method. Applied Biodynamics
(Newsletter of the Josephine Porter Insitute of Applied
Biodynamics). Issue No. 49, Summer. pp. 1, 2-9,

More folks are rolling down cover crops (living mulches)
to allow ground coverage while the plants slowly
senesce and die back; though you might need to flame
emerging vegetation in some instances. Cereal-crop
based windbreak strips between plasticulure beds would
be suitabable to rolling.

Steam, foam steam, and aerated steam seems like the
golden jewel for non-chemical suppression of cover crops,
living mulches, and weeds; referring to its expense.

Regards,

Steve Diver
http://www.attra.ncat.org









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