Strawberry Patch Makeover (Part 1) Removing bindweed and ground elder 

I had a patch of ground elder.... pulled them all out , covered with thick cardboard, covered with thick layer of wood chips...it worked!! Only now,ivy is starting to crawl in😂...nature doesn't like emptiness 😊

Hiya Kat - 100%. Agree totally. Honestly that’s the best approach for anyone who is setting up an allotment or veggie garden. Let nature deal with the weeds. For new gardeners I always recommend exactly what you’ve just done there. Be patient and grow in tubs for year 1. Once you’ve got your pots going you should build three bay compost heap pronto. Fill two bays with horse, sheep, cow and chicken dung. Bay three gives you a place for all your garden and kitchen waste. Then you have a whole year to sort your shed, water butts, nice place to shelter, potting bench etc etc. When your beds are ready and the weeds are pretty well zonked, you’ll have two cubic metres of first class compost on your lot. Worth more than gold. And you’ll have grown plenty of veggies in your pots, which you can continue to do. I only grow spuds in tubs now. One minor problem we have where I live is that mice tend to move in under the plastic. Then the brown snakes move in to get the mice 😖. You have to be dead careful when you lift it up…. I reckon a gardener is a compost grower and the compost grows the veg. Had a chuckle when I saw you putting the chips down though. Crossed my mind that the red ants are gonna love that condo you’ve just built them 😊. As always great to see your happy, smiling face. Many thanks.

That bindweed will be back!

It's so uplifting to see that I'm not the only person with ground elder problem :D ;)

Good on you I've been "doing Charles Dowding" in my allotment space (120m2). It has reduced seed born weeds 98%. But, like you, root based weeds like Bindweed, crab grass and Mares tail are down 70%, but still popping up and creeping in from the sides. It's a war of attrition ! I have anthe Gardena 12" long slim digger to ease out roots plus I've just been working over the whole place to deeply lift, gently pull out even big long root sections I also deeply dug and cleaned a further 1m all around the site as a way of stopping new guys creeping back in. Your way of using scolarisation with opaque black plastic looks very interesting. I subscribed, liked and WILL follow !

It's amazing the difference it makes! Your allotment is looking lovely.

Beautiful! Simple plan and very nicely done. 😊

Perfect timing. I just bought some seascape bare root strawberries. Looking forward to part 2.

Was considering doing exactly the same with a similar sized plot, great to see someone who has it completed - many thanks , new subscriber added!!

Well done Katrina, that was quite an infestation, hopefully this will control the problem weeds for you. As I'm sure you know it's quite a good idea to relocate and re-stock strawberry beds every once in a while anyway - looking forward to Pt2 !

Garden maintenance is always part of the whole scenario. So far this year I've dug up and divided a couple delphinium that were getting old, not flowering as they have for five or so years. Too I've dug up and divided a younger peony that was completely overgrown with witch grass and marjoram. Putting down black plastic, as you did, surely smothers that piece of ground over the months. That will be nice having several varieties of strawberries so you have a lasting harvest over the summer months. I always enjoy your videos. Thanks for sharing and have fun in your garden. Cheers!

Looks great with the mulch on!

You sure have put in some work on your garden and it is looking good. We gardeners do like playing in the dirt. It does bring life and lots of good foods. Have fun!

Gosh you worked hard there Katrina, but it looks great now. Great idea using it for your potatoes! Looking forward to part 2.

I found using lots of cardboard and a heavy mulch really helped. Means it will eventually come back through but makes getting metres of it our in one piece much easier so over the next year or two its fairly easy to get the bulk out. I've always found the plastic to degrade and fly about the allotments. Very effective but I hate getting rid of it afterwards. Cardboard and and heavy mulch is my go to if possible.

We don’t have bind weed but we do have others to deal with one is Creeping Charlie that make it into out lawns taking over green. Wishing you success and winning your battle. Thank you for sharing your gardening chores. 👍❤️🙂

Those little fairy stomps on the wood chips .. very cute 😝

great job, thanks for sharing. i'm growing strawberries this year for the first time.

Great update as always. That is the only way to kill those weeds. well done for showing it.

I hate bindweed, I call it the devils guts. One thing sticks with me was watching Geoff Hamilton with my mum many years ago, he nailed a piece of bindweed root to garden shed door, then 8 years later got it down and planted it. The root still grew!

Great work and good luck with the strawberries 🍀

Hiya Katrina, oh yes will be using this method for my back garden spaces that are a bit over due for care. Ontario Canada 🇨🇦🐝

Very good video and good advice! Also, your smile is gorgeous. 🙂

Can't wait for part 2 Katrina. My strawberry bed is overun with weeds too! My problem are docks with massive roots and stinging nettles. At least I can make fertiilizer with the stingers!

Bind weed! 😭😱 It's all over my large garden. In the herb and salad bed. In the flower borders and the shrubbery. I hate it. I can't do what you have done because it's in established garden. I find if I keep pulling it, it will eventually weaken the plant and it get's more controllable. But a year and a half ago we finished a building project I the garden and had some hard landscaping done. This involved moving a lot of soil that had been dug up for the build and putting it in the new landscaped areas. I then planted it out. And 6 months later realised that a ton of bindweed must have been dormant in that soil we moved and brought back to the top and it went crazy. I should have been out pulling it today as I had some time at home. But it was too cold with endless showers and hail and I was a wimp.

good luck with your weeds katrina

Hi Katrina i did exactly the same as you did It worked well for me ,as 71 year old i even managed the wood chip dance , ,albeit a little slower 🤣🤣

With all this crazy weather I think we’re all going to enjoy more weeds 😂😂 Love these projects 🤗

You are a hard worker!

Good job!

Fantastisch Good work Katrina you the best te moostiun te looking Top 🌱👍🧤🌾🌿⛅🏵️🌸

I’ve been fighting with grass on my raised beds. We usually try to clean our beds a few minutes per day so we can enjoy the weekend.

Pots on top, yesss! 😍

Howdy Katrina, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of your videos (my feed has been taken over by news from Ukraine and US politics and only a few gardening videos). I too have a fondness for strawberries and grow them mostly in my greenhouse. The deer ate on the ones outside but many have come back. That plastic liner should do the trick on those pesky weeds, it looks much like the pond liners I’m using for my media beds in my aquaponic greenhouse which is the biofilter for the fish tank in my garage. Living in a desert using only rainwater catchment means I’m limited in how much I can grow outside. I did plant out the dahlias outside right by one of the rainwater tanks. Dahlias are what introduced me to your channel but I like your garden, much greener than my desert, but I love it here nonetheless. Thanks for your videos!

I normally leave the plastic on throughout the grow season and cut little squares in it for my seeds to grow.

I love your plot 😊

GOD bless you Sister Katrina. I Love Strawberries but haven't got them to grow 😢

Hi Katrina. Watching you from Cyprus. Hate bindweed. Thank you for your advice. ❤Xx

i love that thumbnail, so cute!

Good job

New camera Katrina? Your videos always have superb quality and editing but this one is on a whole other level. Felt like I was watching a gardening TV program! Excited for your new strawberry patch, hopefully less tackling of the weeds in the future lol

Very helpful 👍 I had bindweed popping up all over my border last year (coming through landscape sheeting and bark) I’m assuming that the previous owner had used this as a method of controlling it. I pulled it when I could, none has come up yet in the border, but it’s coming up on the edges of my newly made no dig veg bed!!!!!!! So I feel my efforts will have all been for nothing 😔.

Great video as always Katrina. Informative and entertaining.

I have terrible bindweed problems in my currant patch. For a few years I dried digging out everything I could find, without success, so I've covered it for a year and three months with cardboard and black plastic sheeting. I lifted it last week to have a look underneath, and there is bindweed root growing everywhere beneath it.

Just found your channel and can empathise on the bindweed! Got several patches in our garden and amongst established plants which makes it hard reach. I just put some canes in yesterday to grow some up and am going to try weedkiller and wrapping it in small plastic bags, see if it makes a dent. Awful stuff! As an aside, fair play for putting up with some of the creepy and rude comments, just seeing the ones on this vid alone made me furious.

Bind weed travels under ground quite a distance. Will pop up under ground again and again. But it does need to photosynthesise . To stop I that just keep pulling and digging out. In the end it weakens the weed as long as it doesn’t get too photosynthesised. Bloody awful stuff. I think Wiltshire is full of it 😂

I'm a little late but congratulations on your marriage!! This must be the year of the strawberry I'm growing alpine strawberries by seed and June bearing strawberries by starts . I'm going to try growing them with oregano under my figs . I'm hoping the oregano will ward off slugs and other pests.

Looks great, especially with the woodchip! It'll make for a nice area for potted plants. I really wish I could apply this method, but unfortunately my ground elder patch is also where my aronia grows, so covering the ground with anything will be difficult (and probably harmful to the shrubs. I guess I could try moving the aronia to get it out of there, but that would be a huge undertaking as there are multiple enormous shrubs...

gorgeous

I did the same thing last year and it just grew under the plastic and appeared on the other side 😂😂 I’m sick off pulling them out every week

Fantastisch Good work katriena you te best te moostuin te looking Top 🌱👍🧤🌾🌿🌤pellets

I think you should spray water on the roots of the strawberries to get rid of all the soil to make sure that no Bishop's Weed rhizomes are mixed in with the strawberry roots. We've had it in our apartment gardens for 20 years. It's especially tough to get rid of when it mixes with shallow rooted shrubs. Cheers!

save the strawberry's .. yummm

i did exactly this across my whole allotment in between my beds, bindweed will continue to spread untill it finds light again, i had bindweed spread from one end of my allotment to the other hidden under the plastic then popped up in all of my beds! i had to remove all woodchips and plastic to get at the parent roots, nightmare!

I saw rabbit9696 comment about getting rid of ground elder, and it reminded me that a old gardener at our local allotment said that Tagetes minuta Mexican Marigold, can get rid of bind weed. Personally, I have also done this method of just using either a very thick sheet. I've used cardboard. I used weed suppressant just to give myself a break because I don't actually want the hassle of dealing with that area whilst it's going through. It's decontamination of the unwelcome plant so I think this is a really constructive and positive way to deal with an issue. Especially when when going back to use that area you know you can add all the mulches and companion planning to then re activate the soil.

I've got bindweed, wild garlic and arum ....I'm 4 years in and still struggling to keep it at bay ! Interested to see your progress ❤

Watching a real woman doing real work REALLY warms my heart. Great to see your allotment is getting ready for more planting!

The mulch will make good compost material.

They say the best way to get rid of ground elder is to move house! We're surrounded by it so much so we harvest it for mulch (the leaves) by strimming it and form Ruth Stout method potato beds.

You will NEVER be free of bind weed.😂😂 I have been digging it up for years. Have you heard of solarizing? Use clear plastic instead of black and sunshine basically fries the weeds.

You are adorable 😊..love all your videos 📹 wow super fantastic 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

The passed gardener had covered the ground elder in DPC for three years. I arrived and asked why the pladtic is there. I uncovered the earth and within two weeks up it came again. Glyphosate is the answer. And not just one application

Hi Kat, lovely video as always! The space looks transformed and I look forward to seeing how it works out. Also, I really love your dungarees - would you mind sharing where they’re from? Thanks so much! 😊

Ive had a patch about six times the size of that covered and woodchipped in the same way for three years now. It still comes up constantly at the edges (even the edges i secured with nails and batons to the edges of raised beds, it still finds a way through even a 0.5mm gap) i pick away any i see on a daily basis. Look under the plastic and theres a ton of healthy looking bindweed roots..three years..still there.

Thanks Katrina. Just thought any update in your decision for the orchard?

Hope this works 😊👌

We tried to get rid of the weeds in our strawberry patch without plastic. We'll see if it will work.

One way to enjoy strawberries throught the year is to grow a perpetual variety like Mara des Bois. I grow this variety both inside my polytunnel and in a dedicated bed and I get strawberies from early/mid May until the end of September .... in South Wales. I also have a bindweed problem :( I have tried to use the plastic sheet method but I found that it would travel horizontally along the ground until it found the edges. My current method involves the use of a herbicide which I almost never normally use. I put canes in the ground and the bindweed finds these and climbs up them. I then paint the leaves with the herbicide to kill the plant.

Awesome video. Could do with your expert gardening here in Sheffield

3 more constructive solutions - garlic, leave in for 2 seasons, will kill off groung elder, or broad beans, 1 season or potatoes. All will eradicate ground elder. Not sure about bind weed - I suspect the right companion planting should work- only difference is you're looking for ones that don't get on, and you get a harvest too.

If you want to reuse the silage tarp, it is better to leave it uncoverd. It will become brittle and fall apart under the woodchips… not so bad that you have small pieces of plastic, but bad enough so you can’t reuse it. I had lots of bermuda grass in my garden. Good luck!

Katrina, Ground alder is edible and tastes great. Use it as you would, any other green leaf, side veg, garlic greens, pasta, quiche, soup,...... if you "over crop it" and pull roots as you harvest the greens you will eventually win. Harvesting them to death is very satisfying poetic justice. Nettles, sticky weed and chickweed can also be cropped to death. And if you can wash the grit out of your Hairy Bittercress it to tastes fantastic in a salad or on cheese sandwiches. Bon Apatite.

😻

Hi does this work for nettles as well. My garden has been taken over by them!

I'll be looking forward to the vid on taking care of strawberries & the critters that prey on them. This is the second year my strawberry plants have fallen victim to vine weevil grubs & I'm thinking of giving them a miss this year, I rescued two plants out of twenty-two strawberry plants, the rest were decimated by these grubs 🙁I'd be really glad to get some tips on how to control them. Thank you for the video.

How do you stop the ground elder migrating to all the beds around the plot? It can spread for miles !!

I've used black plastic for years and years.

Good luck trying to get rid of that bindweed. I'm not convinced that your method will work - I hope you prove me wrong though!

I made the mistake a few years back of actually buying Creeping Jenny from a garden centre after being attracted by the thought of its golden flowers to carpet some areas. Error !! As ground cover it gets everwhere & chokes out most other plants, though not unfortunately couch grass which spreads interminably in my sandy loam garden beds. I also have the smaller convolvulus bindweed but it is small & easily removed so does not present the same scale of problem as the vigorous couch grass or Creeping Jenny. This year I am gonna try eliminating it with repeated spraying with full strength white vinegar.

The best way I have found is, to dig out the weeds and roots the best you can. Then apply a covering of compost mixed with wood chips. Then cover it with the plastic. When you remove the plastic you will find that the weeds have by and large gone, now the bed is super fertile when you do plant. The worm population will have exploded improving soil structure, drainage and oxygen root availability. The wood chip will have rotted and fungal activity will have been activated to ensure maximum nutrient availability to your plants. I almost forgot to mention water the bed before putting the plastic on. 10:01

Bindweed is the bane of my existence, chokes out all my plants, weed it, it comes back. We had some minor success with plastic, then a friend (trying to help) rotivated and has made it worse.

I don't see too many people using a mattock nowadays. When I was a lad every home had one . Get as much of that woodchip as you can Katrina and pile it up over your plastic to rot down. Most of the commercial composts are made from 100% wood chip .

Was going to suggest spuds in pots but then you said it lol

It's a good way to clear bindweed but apparently you have to leave the cover on for two years to kill it off. Alan Titchmarch says bindweed won't grow on lawns becuase you mow low. Well, many don't all have flat lawns with short species of fine grass to mow low. It's all over my front and back lawns and into my beds. The gardener in The Guardian says dig it up, no need to use weedkiller. You can't do that if there is rubble and stones under under your garden, unless you get a digger and pay to dump 2 ft deep rubble. That's how far bindweed goes. I'm afraid you have to grow it up canes to get enough leaf for weedkiller to act. if you are unable to smother your patch for two years. That or be far more anti nature by getting the digger in.

Great job, but are you not concerned that you will have plastic disintegrated overtime ?

What happens after you remove the plastic, I wonder? Do you dig it up? I want to do this in my pollytunnel autumn to spring to kill bind weed and little purple spreading weed, but not sure it will be enough time.

Thank you for your video. Sadly PVC is a really toxic type of plastic. Leaching chemicals into the soil. There are other types of plastic less toxic to use.

Love your green overalls! What make are they?

The Ground Elder/Goutweed/Bishop's Weed.... You really should tarp at least 3 feet over all the good sides. It'll peek out at you soon. I've had success with Glyphosate - Fall treatment. I feel for you. I'd take Bindweed ANY day vs. that. Just make sure you watch those edges. I hope you thoroughly went through all the roots of the strawbs for Goutweed roots. God that thing is HELL.

What is the difference between ‘doubling it over’ and “actually doubling it over“?

Prevention better than cure - weeding; little and often.

you should look at the Back to Eden way, they put woodchip on the bottom then manure then compost, [or other way round] Great growing way and you can use waht you done already . I have bindweed, best advice ive seen is dig it up as much as you can and not let it grow , evntually it dies out, If you see a speck pull it up,dont let it get light or water dont let it flower, its hard at first but you eventually keep on top of it. but you will always have it,put the bindweed in a bag let it compost right down, or burn it

Why not try cardboard sheets to keep light out. This will rot down and make good compost. I suggest multiple layers over time to overlay.

Good luck, hope it works. Bindweed is horrid...

Your covered area needs to be much larger the shoots will reach the cover then grow on the surface until they reach the light, you won't get rid of it there will be seeds in the ground and very deep roots that will grow so only use that area for annual crops. I would have forked out every scrap of root first never use a spade that will make more plants, modern weedkillers will give it a headache but not completely kill it

The only way to rid ground elder and binder weed is to move house 😂😂😂

Covering the land with plastic is a terrible thing on many levels. Firstly it does not kill bind weed, it harbours the root systems which then spill out at the sides, the plastic wilslowly degrade over years and leave fl🎉cks of plastic in the earth. Not cool. You wanna get rid of bind weed? Dig it out, burn it, grow potatoes. Following year smatter mustard, and plant fennel within. Don’t sweep it under the carpet , roll it up, sweep it up , dance and grow 😀

Bonjour, quel dommage de mettre les copeaux de bois sur la bâche et non sous la bâche. S'ils avaient été en dessous, les verres de terre auraient pu les manger et enrichir le sol, rendant ainsi la terre plus fertile. Bonne continuation à vous dans votre potager.

Dungarees- very Felicity Kendall-esque. If you’re too young to remember look up The Good Life 😂

eh ? what's " summer " ?