How To Get Rid Of Monster Weeds - And Love Planet Earth

Do “the Small Footprint Family” actually have small feet? Is a “lasagne bed” something kinky Italians sleep in? Can you get rid of monster weeds without using nasty chemicals? You’ll find all the answers below.

In my eagerness to atone for the sin of spraying just a tiny bit of Roundup on my beloved plants (see my article my Montanto shame) I reached out to social media for assistance – what else does one do?

Mike Lukas on Google+ suggested creating a “lasagna bed” (see picture), which is an organic bed involving various layers of straw/waste/manure etc. That’s great, except I’m too lazy for anything more than about two layers. My mind switches off after that.

Later he came up with this idea, which sounds even simpler:

“check out YouTube”

The multi-layered bed reminded me of when I started a veggie patch right in the middle of our lawn, mostly using old newspaper. Digging is an activity I don’t enjoy, so I’ll go to great lengths to avoid it. I simply went out one day and laid about a year’s worth of damp newspapers right on top of our lawn in as shape I thought was a regular oblong but was in fact not even geometrically recognisable.

About six months later we had a healthy organic veggie patch and a smaller lawn. It worked. No digging whatever. We got years of herbs and salad veggies out of that.

The ‘Small footprint family‘ (maybe they all have small feet?) have ten different organic weed control methods.

Hmm, looks interesting. I should point out here that I already have a bed of organic straw-based mulch from a company called Strulch. When we moved house I found about 100 feet of out-of-control border belonging to all of us and determined to deal with it. Someone’s parent had planted previously but the whole area was now out of control, covered in stinging nettles and an invasive vine. Under that were the few surviving plants. Since then I’ve pretty much conquered the whole thing and it looks way better than it did.

Everything was fine until I came across some broad-leaved weeds that wouldn’t budge and that weakened my resolve to be purely organic. Out came the Roundup and the rest is history. But Mike’s given me a great idea that’s a lot less bother than the lasagna bed. It involves three simple steps. I decide to give it a go.

1. Cut the offending weed right down to nothing: