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I have a spot in my yard that the former owners used as a garden. They planted many bulb plants. It overgrew and was a horrible mixture of weeds and bulbs. I cut it all back and covered it with black tarp for a season. This winter I painstakingly dug everything up (I thought) with a hoe and spade shovel. I dug down to roots and bulbs. This spring everything grew back with a vengeance before I could get out and do more work on it. I eventually want to put blueberries there. That’s why I’ve been hesitant about using chemicals but at this point I’m about to nuke it with ground clear. Anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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If you go to the Home Depot, there are dayworkers there that charge about $30/hour to do whatever work you need. Our neighbors hired two of them and they had it cleared out and ready to take to the dumps in about 3 hours. If you have a yard waste/compost bin from the garbage collection company, you can just fill it up every week until it's gone. Then you can apply a good pre-emergent weed killer, which acts by inhibiting germination
of seeds, so you can go ahead and put in the plants that you want.
If you go to the Home Depot, there are dayworkers there that charge about $30/hour to do whatever work you need. Our neighbors hired two of them and they had it cleared out and ready to take to the dumps in about 3 hours. If you have a yard waste/compost bin from the garbage collection company, you can just fill it up every week until it's gone. Then you can apply a good pre-emergent weed killer, which acts by inhibiting germination
of seeds, so you can go ahead and put in the plants that you want.
Thanks. Do the workers hang around at any specific day or time?
DONT use ground Clear if you're planting food there. Horrible stuff that will prevent plants from being healthy even 2 yrs after.
I'd suggest the cardboard layering but the issue is the soil it sounds like. So …. How about if...
you dig down half foot, get rid of all that soil, bring in new fresh soil with compost? It's the extreme thing to do but the most safe and successful way
Around here any patch of ground left to its own devices, will become thick with weeds and grasses, and eventually trees, if you let it go. The world is loaded with seeds, new, old, dormant, flying overhead. If you want to cultivate fertile ground, and plant things in it, you will constantly battle weeds. It's not a one time thing.
Best solution for blueberries would be to buy mature plants and plant them, and either just weed-wack around them, or put in weed cloth and bark on top. Depends on how formal your landscaping is.
Spraying roundup won't hurt the ground for blueberries. Believe me, my BF has blueberries and I spray weeds (carefully of course) around them all the time.
Maybe a roto-tiller if it's a smaller pad. If it's larger, then a Cat D9H with rippers should do it.
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