Anyone burn off their raised beds? | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

Admittedly, I don't really know the benefits of burning and haven't read the article yet. I know it has been practiced for hundreds of years, so I'm sure there's something to it. I do add wood ash and even charcoal to my compost that gets incorporated into the soil.

I'm with KE in that I prefer to either sheet mulch or plant heavily dense cover crops. I'm going with a mix of winter rye and vetch this year in the beds that will not have fall/winter plantings. The vetch will build nitrogen in the soil and the rye will yield a ton of green mulch in the spring.

As far as weed prevention, I'm going with the permaculture principles of close dense plantings and adding mulch, mulch and more mulch!

KE, you're zone 5 right?

For that zone stawberry and lingonberry are great ground covers that produce an edible.

you can also look at dutch white clover or maybe even vetch which both will fix nitrogen.

Creeping thyme, stonecrop and creeping phlox are nice too. These should all flower and attract beneficial insects.

Keep in mind that most of these ground covers can get out of control since their nature is to rapidly spread out.

Personally I've only used strawberry, dutch white clover and hairy vetch so far and only inside of raised beds and a hugelbed. I'm thinking about adding phlox and thyme to my landscape as I'm planning out my food forest.

You can also add garlic, chives, horseradish and jerusalem artichoke to your root layer if you want more edibles.