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0:00Learning how to deal with weeds is something that everybody trying to grow really anything, even if it's just landscape beds in front of your house,

0:08you got to learn how to deal with weeds.

0:10And so, that is something that comes up over and over again as we're interacting, rubbing shoulders with, and and hearing questions from our

0:17customers. And so, we want to talk about weeds a little bit. Specifically, right now, we're going to talk about how to prep uh a new field plot essentially to

0:26create that to kind of get rid of the the initial, you know, just massive grass and weeds that that you have if

0:35you're prepping a new field area and trying to get ready to grow crops. So,

0:40we would call it like a stale stale seedbed. Well, the stale seed bed is actually a technique for getting rid of

0:48weeds. And basically the way it works is once you once you initially work up your

0:56beds, however you're doing that, um you know, you you're basically preparing your beds as if you were going to plant

1:05in them. So you put down your amendments and all of that, but then rather than

1:12planting, you just water it as if it's planted, but then let it sit. And

1:19basically what you're really doing is just encouraging the weeds to grow. And so after a week or so, there should be

1:29lots of tiny little weed seeds coming up.

1:34And one way to deal with that is just with something like a simple colinear hoe where you

1:42just your goal is to disturb the soil as little as possible. So you're just

1:49running that colinear hole just very lightly over the surface of the bed and dispatching all those new weed seeds.

2:00And then if you have time, ideally you would make sure those have died. You know, ideally do it on a sunny day um

2:09when the soil is dry and they'll die very quickly, but then rewater

2:17it and wait for a second flush of weeds to come up and do the same thing. Mhm.

2:23So that's that's the classic way of stale seed bedding. So you're you're just doing your best not to disturb the soil to bring up any more weed seeds.

2:34But then just dispatching those. And my estimate is if you were to do that twice

2:41like I just described, you would get rid of 80% of your weeds Mhm. before you

2:48ever have plants in the ground. So So yeah, let's just say you're just going and tilling up a brand new area. this

2:57coming in a week later, this is probably not going to work though because you have so much, you know, biomass, root mass, and everything from all the weeds

3:05that you just tilled in, right? Yeah. If if the ground is really clumpy or, you know, just lots of weeds, yeah, this

3:14isn't going to work in that case. Um, I think the silage tarp is is by far the

3:21best solution. In fact, I was going to describe how you can use the silage tarp for making a stale

3:29seedbed. Basically, you do like I already described where you water the soil and encourage the weeds to germinate. And once they've germinated,

3:41rather than using like a a colinear hoe to to dispatch the weeds, you just cover

3:48it with the silage tarp. Mhm. And if the weather's hot, if it's sunny and warm,

3:55those weeds are going to die very quickly, you know, just a few days. So once you've killed that first batch of

4:03weeds, take the silage tarp off, make sure the soil's moist again, see if you can get another flush of weeds, and do

4:12that again. I mean, it's actually simpler and I think more effective than the colinear hoe. Yeah. Um, and if you

4:20have time on, you know, say you're you're a month or two out, you can always just lay down the silage tar, you

4:28know, wet water the area really well and then lay down the silage tarp and just leave it and then pull it back, you know, six or eight weeks later and you

4:36you have no weeds at all. Yeah. And if you've plowed or tilled and and you have

4:44those initial, you know, clumps of grass and everything, the silage tarp is definitely going to be the the easiest

4:52way to to deal with that. Just cover it and it'll break down quite quickly and then you'll be ready to go from there.

5:01But I I still remember I don't know if you remember um our first winter CSA in

5:092003. We planted a bed of carrots out here on on one of those 240 foot long beds. I I definitely remember that.

5:20And I mean it was like a lawn, you know,

5:25we planted the carrots and the grass just came up so profusely. It was literally just a lawn. And I think we

5:34spent two weeks. Of course, that's not full time, but but over the it took us two weeks to weed that bed by hand.

5:43Yeah. You know, you got to hold on to the carrot seed while you're trying to pull all the grass. I mean, not the carrot seed, but the carrot plant. Yeah.

5:52It was ridiculous. And then by the time we got to the end of the bed, we had to go back and start over again. It was just So, we've discouraging. We've been there. We know what it's like on new,

6:02you know, new beds. It can be overwhelming. Yeah. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If

6:10you can deal with those weeds before you ever plant your carrots, you're going to be way ahead. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I saw this

6:18recently. one of the neighbors close to the shop just uh had a field that he just tilled up and then like the next day I see, you know, plants out there

6:26and I'm thinking, "Oh, he's going to just be fighting weeds all summer." Um,

6:31so yeah, think ahead, plan ahead, cover it with silage tarp. For those if you're not familiar with silage tarp, it's a a

6:38heavyduty 5 mil thick uh at least what we sell is 5 mil thick um plastic and it's UV treated. It's white on one side,

6:46black on the other. It's developed and used largely in the silage industry for for dairy cows, uh dairy cow food

6:55production essentially. But anyways, um it's a a UV treated very durable plastic and you can lay it down over your soil.

7:03soil loves to be covered and you'll just get it blocks all the sunlight so the weeds won't grow and they'll die out and

7:09then your earthworms and all that soil biology just loves that dark moist environment and it just breaks down

7:17under there and after a few weeks you'll pull it up and you'll be amazed at how prepared it is to to plant directly

7:25into. So that's why silage sharp has become so universally h I mean maybe not universally there's still some people

7:33that that try to steer away from using a lot of plastics but man it saves you so much so much time and work in bed prep

7:42and you know with it being a multi-year use product I mean we've used it for many years with it being UV stabilized

7:50if you take care of it it'll last a long time and then you can recycle it but it's uh it's a great product. It's the closest thing I tell people to no work

7:59bed preparation. I mean, there's there's no such thing as no work gardening, but

8:05um silage tarps make a huge contribution to to lessening that work. Yeah. Yeah.

8:13And you can lay the whole thing out or you can cut it in strips to cover individual beds. You can do a lot of different cool stuff with it. I know

8:21there's a lot of concerns about microlastics. Um, you know, from my observation, and again, I'm not a

8:29scientist, but I I think a lot of those microlastic concerns come from non non

8:37UVTreated plastics, which will break down very quickly.

8:42But with this UVT treated plastic, you know, after 6 or 8 years, it's going to

8:49start getting where it tears easily and stuff. And I think if you were to to get

8:56rid of it at that point, I don't think you're getting a lot of microlastics in your It's not

9:03breaking down. If you go if if you try to, you know, buy cheaper plastic. We've seen this. Uh, in fact, we've got reviews from customers on this like,

9:12"Oh, I didn't want to pay a couple hundred dollar, so I just went to Lowe's and bought a five mil plastic." It's not the same plastic. You know, the five mil

9:20black plastic that Lowe's sells is not going to have that. So, it it breaks down very quickly and then you will be getting plastic in your soil. So, steer

9:27away from that. But anyways, we've given a lot of different tips here. Hopefully, this is helpful for you guys watching.

9:33And, uh, if you have any questions, feel free to submit them. Otherwise, reach out to our customer service team if you have any questions about Farmers Friend

9:41products. And until next time, happy growing.

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