clearing weeds from the blueberry area, help?

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i live in new hampshire and have good soil for blueberries. meaning acidic. have 40 great blueberry bushes and rows of strawberries and asparagus in between. the problem is the wild strawberry runners and ground rasberry runners and lots of other stuff that grow into the rows continuously.the area is large and can't possibly see myself digging all the weeds out, but want to have it under control and get rid of them. would putting down black landscaping cloth or weed cloth, them covering it with pinebark mulch kill the weeds underneath in such a large area, or would this just make the mess worse? the mowing in between the bushes and rows in between is ridiculous, and i'm not looking forward to treying to keep up with that again, any suggestions? thanks, laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), February 07, 2001

Answers

Chicken tractor to the rescue!

-- Eve in FL (owenall@lwol.com), February 08, 2001.

I did something similar around my blueberries to keep down the weeds, except that I put down paper bags (grocery or feed, whatever you've got) and then put pine needles and some left over pine bark chips that I had around it. So far, so good. I may have to replace it in a few years, but I figure it's not a big deal to do so! I've done similar around fern beds, hostas, daylilies, azaleas, lingonberries, and some other flowers several years ago, and there are a few weeds creeping back in now, but it's a lot easier to weed. I figure I'll redo the beds either this summer or so, but all in all, I thought it was a success.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), February 08, 2001.

We've used heavy black plastic to kill off weeds. It may not be organic, but it certainly kills off weeds and weed seeds. Just be careful cause snakes love to go under the plastic as it is wrm and moist there. We put old tires down to keep the plastic in place.

-- Ardie from WI (a6203@hotmail.com), February 08, 2001.

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