286 Tomatoes 450 Beans 5 Zillion weeds!

[chefshelle]

We now have 286 Tomato plants, 450 Green Beans, 250 Pepper plants, cukes, lettuce, potatoes, zucchini, squash, etc. As you can imagine, it's a lot of work!

My girlfriend and I are debating over how to keep the weeds at bay. ALL suggestions are appreciated. We did use Preen at the beginning of the planting. We also tried putting newspapers down, which was a blast to pick up after they blew everywhere! We've also put paper shreds around most of the plants to help with the disease from dirt splashing.

Laura pulls the weeds and dumps them in the woods, I use the hoe which is 10X faster. Either way, we still have weeds right back up in a few days. It takes hours and hours to pull and dump the weeds. Any suggestions? Is one way better than the other? The largest of the 3 gardens was just started this year from a field.

We are growing these to sell, in case you were wondering! Our husbands still think we have lost our minds!

[mccolgan1]

when we planted the garden with some floweing plants we dug it over put down some weedproof but water absorbing material cut hols where the plants were going then coverd it with gravel. the weeds don't come trough but the plant has plenty of root room. could do simler thing .

[smokensqueal]

This is going to be interesting. My sister in-law had to grow something in AG class so she did tomatoes. We moved them to her garden (her dad's garden) and we ended up planting 128 plants. That's not counting the ones I already planted. I'm sure she's going to need help with the weeds to.

My suggestion is either newspaper or cardboard with a small amount of very fine mulch or compost on top to hold it down. When the fall comes or next spring there won't be much left and it will work right back into the soil.

I had a flower garden that got taken over by weeds before I got to go out and plant so what I did was take a bunch of cardboard cut it to fit then cut holes to plant the flower then covered the cardbaord with compost. So far it's looking really good. Anything growing in the compost can very easily be pulled and anything sneaking up from the sides can also be pulled very easily.

[Gary350]

There are a dozen ways to keep the weeds down, I have tried them all. What works best for me is I go to the garden about twice a week early in the morning walk up and down each row with a hoe and cut down all the weeds. When weeds are tiny they are easy to cut down so don't give them a chance to grow. Just drag you hoe over the weeds and they get cut off. Be sure to sharpen your hoe razor sharp before you get started. It is real easy just to slide the hoe over the surface of the dirt and it slices off every thing it toughes. It takes me 10 minutes to weed my garden. I have 40 tomatoe plants, about 300 beans in 2 rows, 300 corn plants in 5 rows, 12 pepper plants, squash, egg plant, okra, carrots, onions, potatoes, leaks, beats, garlic, sweet potatoes, caster beans, and herbs.

[freedhardwoods]

This is what I use. I bought it 17 years ago before MTD bought them out and started making cheap junk with the Troybilt name on it. Mine has a lifetime guarantee although MTD probably won't stand behind it. I am on my second set of tines and it is still going strong.

That is quite a lot of tomatoes and peppers, but 450 green bean plants is only about 1/3 lb of seed. I planted over 3 lbs of seed and don't expect to have an excessive amount to sell. If you meant 450' of rows then that would produce a fair amount.