Weed Smothering With A Tarp In A No Dig Garden

Weed smothering with tarps is an efficient, low-maintenance way to prepare your garden for planting. Tarps also help protect fragile soil ecosystems from disruption by mechanical devices like rototillers and ploughs.

No-till methods rely on maintaining healthy soil structures to create quality topsoil, and tarps help increase plant-available nitrogen for crops.

1. Put the Tarp Over the Crop

Tarps can quickly create garden beds in existing grassy areas or suppress weeds before planting new crops. For optimal results, choose dark-colored tarps which absorb heat and help maintain lower soil temperatures.

Contrary to tillage, using tarps can save both fuel and labor hours while not disturbing soil structure or biology. Furthermore, they enable soil water retention, while preventing any rainwater pooling up or leaking into bed spaces.

Breckbill and Fagan found that three week tarping of cover crops proved effective at terminating cover crop growth while simultaneously restricting perennial weed growth, while shorter duration tarps did not significantly reduce weeds or create more productive seedbeds.

Additionally, tarps were found to increase plant-available nitrogen (nitrate) levels in the soil over three weeks – this increases crop yields due to increasing crop nutrient availability. Furthermore, they maintained steady soil temperatures while improving direct-sown seed germination.

2. Pull the Tarp Over the Crop

Tarping has become an increasingly popular practice among no dig gardeners who need to prepare beds before planting, offering many advantages such as terminating cover crops, eliminating weeds and creating a seedbed with uniform seeds, conserving moisture levels in soil, increasing nitrate levels in soil and speeding up residue decomposition.

Beneficial insects and earthworms remain active within a cover crop, helping maintain soil health while also expanding fall and spring planting windows. Unfortunately, dense growth allows earwigs to hide under its thick cover, damaging flowering plants or cut flowers in the process.

Cooperators tested four tarping treatments over four weeks – leaving the tarp on for one, two, three, and four weeks each time – and found that while one week did not effectively kill cereal rye and only prevented weeds, two, three, and four week treatments were statistically comparable in their effectiveness. Future research should investigate how weather and accumulation of Growing Degree Days affect outcomes from this method of tarping.

3. Pull the Tarp Over the Weeds

Weeding can be one of the biggest challenges of no dig gardening. Weeds steal nutrients, restrict airflow, and introduce pests – each minute spent weeding is time lost from planting or harvesting crops instead. Silage tarping allows you to eliminate weeds before they become an issue, thus decreasing labor costs and making your garden more profitable.

Tarping is an effective, heavy-duty plastic method utilized in no dig systems to suppress weeds and improve soil biology. It works by depriving weed seeds of light, killing them before they have the chance to germinate. Furthermore, black sides absorb heat which forces seeds out into the open where they eventually sprout and die, while the white sides act to moderate temperatures while ensuring optimal soil temperatures.

Cut and place a tarp of appropriate size over the target area, anchoring it securely to the ground using sandbags, rocks, filled erosion socks, duck-billed anchors or U-nails. Make sure it extends at least one foot beyond the targeted area to prevent new shoots from emerging underneath it.

4. Remove the Tarp

Growers adhering to organic standards find that tarping is the simplest, most efficient way to suppress weeds before planting. By blocking light, opaque tarps eliminate any new weeds that had germinated prior to being covered by an opaque tarp.

Tarps can help moderate soil temperatures and maintain optimal moisture levels to promote seed germination and decomposition, and also protect against erosion caused by rainwater runoff or snow melt. They protect the ground surface from erosion as well as pooling caused by rainfall or snowmelt, helping prevent soil pooling or erosion caused by rainfall or snow melt.

Once a cover crop has died, using a tarp can quickly prepare beds for direct-seeded crops like carrots and radishes to be directly planted in rows. Tilling and amending will help ensure the best seedbed for new veggies to take hold in.

Some farmers use tarps instead of conventional no-till or shallow-till practices, resulting in significantly increased plant available nitrogen (ppm). More research needs to be conducted into how tarping affects soil microorganisms and other crucial ecosystem functions; nevertheless, farmer experience and our own experimental trials indicate tarps as essential tools for no-till and organic vegetable growers.