Weeds - will soil cultivation work?

I've realized that my weed pressure is too high, and I need to find some better strategies to lower the amount of weeds I am dealing with every fall and winter (here in Northern California, if you practice drought tolerant gardening, your "weed time" is when the rains come in the fall and winter). 

What is weed pressure? It is the amount of weeds your yard, garden, or landscaping grows every week, month, or season. Here in the East Bay, my greatest weed pressure is right after the rains start in the fall, mainly oxalis, but also hay/grasses, bindweed, and some others. I have a friend who asked me if I keep my weeds under control with soil cultivation, and I realized that this might be a strategy I need to incorporate into my gardening. 

This is the webpage from the UC ANR (University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources): https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/7250.pdf

This PDF is for organic farmers growing crops but there is a lot of information that pertains to home gardeners. The main topic I want to discuss here is soil cultivation. What is soil cultivation? It is using a hoe or curved scraper, or even a cultivator fork (see "Resources" for links and extra articles - no affiliate earning here) to lightly cultivate the top 1-3 inches of the soil to remove early and small weeds. 

Why haven't I been using soil cultivation? 

Soil cultivation hasn't been on my radar for well over 10 years, mainly because I have been reading and following the "no till" philosophy of gardening. Briefly, "no till" means to disturb the soil as little as possible, and to be fair, there is a lot of science about the microflora of soil that requires being left alone (although maybe not to the extent of not doing any soil cultivation - I'm starting to rethink that). If you have ever lifted up a shovelful of soil and saw long, thin white threads, that's very beneficial soil microbe growth. 

Another factor in favor of "no-till" is that the weed seed bank in most soils is very high, and disturbing soil can jump start germination and produce even more weeds. This is also why I try to cut up my pulled weeds/prunings and use as mulch, again, to stop weed growth. However, it is very apparent that my weed pressure (great term) is too high and I am not making progress against reducing how many weeds I get every year. They grow through mulch, they grow around the big landscape plants that should be competing with them, and some grow even in the driest part of the summer/early fall, even in the areas where the plants get watered maybe twice over our entire dry period. I have accomplished one of my goals, namely making beautiful, loamy soil, but I need to focus on reducing the weed load and finalizing the garden plan so I am not always changing plants (which means more bare soil for less competition with weeds).

It might seem obvious that you should go and knock down the baby weed seedlings right after the first rains, I'm a bit embarrassed to say I never do this, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. One issue is that a vegetable garden is easier to cultivate, and you probably spend more time in that kind of garden than I do in the front yard/backyard, gardening. I just don't think about getting out there to weed until I notice them! But I will definitely get out there next October when the first rains come and see what I can do. 

Other strategies for lowering weed pressure

These are strategies from the UC ANR document, some of which I have been doing for years.

1. Dry Soil 
I have a lot fewer weeds in the summer and early fall (just have to dig up some bermuda grass/bindweed occasionally), it is that first rainfall that explodes everything. More on this in my slug email.

2. Crop competition
- I've been slowly encouraging fava bean plants to naturalize in my backyard (let the beans fall into the soil) and I already have arugula plants that have naturalized, so every winter, I have lots of arugula plants and more and more fave bean plants growing. They are very easy to pull up when I need to do so, they flower for the bees and crowd out some of the other weeds. "Some" being the operative word there, they aren't the perfect winter cover crop for crowding out all weeds. 

There's this quote from the document:
> Highly competitive cover crops can also smother weeds. 

Farmers use red clover and others - okay, felt the need to find a nice chart with the different types of cover crops for the winter and I found this: https://ca.audubon.org/sites/default/files/ca_covercrops_nrcs.pdf

Fava is on there, and I see some other legumes that would be worth growing (nitrogen fixers and all). Anyway, most of these aren't appropriate for the front yard or areas the public will see, but definitely something to think about for the backyard. Although, now that I think about it, growing a smaller cover crop than arugula or fava bean (3 - 4 feet high) that would only reach about a foot might be just fine in the front yard. The yellow oxalis flowers are everywhere in the winter, why would the flowers of a clover be any worse? Need to do some more research...

- Regular plants: of course the weeds don't grow where they grow, but since I'm always experimenting and growing new plants, especially succulents which are slow to grow and out-compete weeds, there is still a lot of bare soil available for the weeds to grow. And bindweed is especially fond of growing up my larger landscape plants, it doesn't really respect other plants, to say the least. 

3. Solarization
This is actually mentioned in permaculture and no-till groups, but I have never done it, mainly for the reason that it is essentially generating a lot of single use plastic. I suppose I could use something that I already have around the house and move it around the yard, but this is primarily a technique for an area that doesn't have any landscaping or plants. I am also not sure it is worth the effort? And this quote:

> You can remove the plastic or use it as a plastic mulch for the subsequent crop by burning holes in the film and transplanting into those holes
Like we aren't already ingesting microplastics in our food and water, you need to put more into the system? I think this is actually terrible advice for multiple reasons. Plastic waste and microplastics is a real problem, I am not going to contribute to it in my gardening. 

4. Mulches
- Plastic mulches are not effective for more than a little while, and just create a huge headache of trying to remove it when the UV from sunlight starts breaking it down. I can't imagine why this is even in the document. 
- The other mulches mentioned are all workable and I agree with this quote:

> Coarse green waste works better as a mulch

This is probably my main technique for fighting weeds even if it isn't 100% effective, mainly because I don't generate enough mulch material to be over 4 inches high all over my garden. Essentially, I cut up the weeds I pull and anything I prune, and throw it back onto the soil. I can generate a big pile of pulled weeds and trimmings in a few hours, but the hard part is actually cutting it up with hand pruners which can take a few hours to break it all down. If I had an acre of land, I'd buy a shredder, but there's no room. 

But yes, I cut up the oxalis and the hay/long grasses (bindweed goes into the green waste bin, even a small piece of root and re-grow) into 2-5 inch long pieces and then put it right back on the ground. If it is dry for a while, it all turns yellow and brown within weeks and looks good relatively quickly. If I can't cut up all of the weeds/prunings, I'll pile it somewhere and let it slowly compost (since I don't water it during the summer) and then use it as mulch when it is somewhat broken down.

It sounds like I am super organized about this but no, it is a bit of a chaotic system. It depends on what area looks like it could use some love and weed control. But after twenty years of doing this in the front and back, I have gorgeous soil: loamy, dark, and rich. I did do some sheet mulching in the beginning of my gardening here, but only in the front yard, which had hard clay dirt with sod that had been laid to sell the house. The roots of the grass didn't grow past the sod more than about an inch or two, the soil was that bad. All of that old sod is gone, and the front yard is all salvias, natives, some succulents, and other wildlife friendly plantings. 

5. Chemical control
Not even an option for me, I'm too worried about the bees and the birds, and well, you get the idea...