[bb41]

what should I do after putting it up in December to the flooring, should I put old carpet down and let the weather and light restriction kill all the unwanted vegetation or does someone have a better suggestion for me ??

[DavidandCollette]

If you mean the beds we put manure/compost on then cost with black plastic until we need the bed then just uncover what you need.  For the path we use weed suppressant

[Fleecewife]

Depends on which weeds are growing.  If they are just annuals, then covering them with either a thick mulch of compostable material, or covering them with something which keeps the light out, will be fine, unless they've seeded everywhere, in which case they will all pop up as soon as you start watering in the spring.  Be careful which kind of carpets you use - they need to be wool.  Synthetics don't break down, but do disintegrate on your soil.

If the weeds are perennials such as couch grass, great bindweed, mare's tail, creeping thistle, nettles, buttercup and so on, you have no real choice but to dig them out, or to use weedkiller if you want to poison your soil.

The better you clean up before you start planting, the less weeding you will need to do later, but remember that weeds love the growing conditions in a polytunnel just as much as plants do, and they seem to get a headstart.

[Marches Farmer]

Corrugated cardboard or paper feed sacks work well as paths - put bark chippings on top and they'll last two or three years.

[cloddopper]

Laying a centre path of 3 foot long concrete slabs to make a 3 foot wide path  is helpful , especially to make a wider area by the door .
In my 13 x 26 tunnel I kept push hoeing the weeds most Sunday evenings or pulling any really fast growth out by  hand  before they ran to seed , then taking the cut /pulled weeds out to the compost bins .. after six months or so there were no more weeds .
.


 I experimented in other tunnels & found that you can also lay black polythene down over a couple of inches of manure ( the worms take it down into the ground ) and then cut holes in it where the plants are going to be put . That keeps the weeds right down and makes it easy to " station "  water plant by plant ,with a long wand on a hose pipe .

 Big plants like tomatoes , aubergines & capsicums were  taken out of their tubs and set in bigger bottomless pots . Big enough so that the top rim of the bottomless pot allowed me to fill it with a litre or so of either water or a liquid feed .

The bottomless pots were the  florist's delivery black flower pots with the bottoms cut out . They'll last for seven or more years if you treat them with a bit of respect.


Manuring or adding compost to the tunnel .
 
Making a hot compost using cow , sheep or pig muck(  as a mixture if possible )  & straw with a bit of chicken or turkey muck & straw bedding is a way of making it nigh on weed free of seeds . So it is good to use in the poly tunnels .

Horse muck & hay are a compost nightmare full of weed seeds that often escape even a hot composting process.

[bb41]

Okey dokey peeps, I heard about not using nylon carpets so probably do the slabs and black polythene version