AusBonsai

G'day all, I am having a lot of trouble with weeds in my black nursery pots as I guess we all do, so does anyone have a solution, other than manual weeding them, or repotting them, how about putting a thick layer of 10mm washed river gravel on them after weeding ???, picture examples. Would appreciate your feedback, thanks.

James

If you can get a hold of old fibre carpet underlay you can cut it to fit the pot with a slit for the trunk. It lets water through, keeps weeds at bay and keeps soil cool in summer. Heavy weedmat might work but would probably blow around.

hi senseijames,
what you have done will do the trick, the odd weed seed will still make its way between the rock but easily pulled out. also large cheap grit will do and once your trees come of age and go into a proper pot it can just be re used.

I'm honorary president of WA - Weeder's Anonymous - so few of my pots ever have weeds and the weeds that do appear seldom last past two waterings. Each day as I water I weed and that means there is never a huge amount... and I'm working on 60 trees. Star weed is a bugbear, especially on trees that I buy in but after a few weeks of concentrated elimination even those pots join the ranks of the normally weed free.

Use Roundup - it kills the weeds and biodegrades when it hits the soil

Brian

Ahh, I strongly disagree with the last post. I wouldn't let any poison near my bonsai.
I can't confirm that it actually degrades when it enters the soil but I CAN verify that common fungi and bacteria which associate with plants in the soil are decemated by application of roundup (and most likely all glyphosphate herbicides). We tested it in Plant-Microbe Interactions and I was very disturbed when I saw that roundup consistently had more devastating effects on soil-bourne microorganisms than the effects of the fungicides and pesticides we tested, which included Benlate, a now discontinued fungicide.
Use it at your peril on potted plants.

Just pull the weeds out, use a soil cover that will best allow the pot to 'breathe', I use zeolite because I have heaps and it is a nice red colour to match some of the natives.
Cheers

I have very few weeds in the pots with diatomite. May have to pull one per week - total, not each pot. Heaps in pots with soil, but I am gradually changing over to all diatomite.

Glenda

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, I thought there might be a magical solution out there, looks like I was wrong
James

bingh wrote:Use Roundup - it kills the weeds and biodegrades when it hits the soil

Brian

G'day Brian, how are you doing, " fellow ex Bonsai pot maker", shame we gave it up, have just started playing around with pots again lately. cheers mate.
James