I think I’ve decided what to do. Firstly I’m not going to go down the registered organic route. I would like to do the certified naturally grown route you suggested but that doesn’t exist in France. I have too much couch grass to weed by hand this year so I will spray with the aim of making it one time only. Most people buy from the markets herer without a though to organic or not so I don’t think it will harm potential sales but I can then continue to work towards my own aim to a more permaculture approach.

One final thought on couch grass, somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I remember reading that tomatoes, or rather their roots, can discourage it. I’ll have to trawl through some of my books (yes it’s that far back it has to be books and not online) and see if I can find it again. I’m sure it’s along with something on companion planting which is something else I want to do.

Not only is the grass sucking nutrients, it might be slightly alleopathic. I try not to hate any plant… but quack pushes my limits. On the upside it is a great pasture and erosion control grass…
-Rob

Deborah, I hadn’t thought of QUACK GRASS (couch grass) in a while. That was one of the nightmare afflictions I read about when starting out, I examined just about every blade of grass that appeared in the garden for quite a while (after I discovered ID-by-clasping auricle!), JUST IN CASE… Anyhow, there’s none here, but what if there had been? In this particular case, from what I’ve read and heard, it’s either glyphosate or an incredible amount of digging and weeding, possibly for, like, YEARS! Or stripping and replacing the topsoil. Or laying down, well, acres of plastic for a long while. Say I don’t have a problem, in this extreme situation, with “just this once”, would I afterwards lie about doing it, or give up certification…? And would I feel I’d cheated (personally, not with the regulations), would that affect everything else? Because I think that, when starting out, “organic” growing is in good part a state of mind that lets you happily take a lot of what could seem in the short run more difficult approaches, while somehow not even paying much attention to conveniences like…chemicals. I mean, I understand and I FEEL the arguments against chemical approaches, the shortsightedness, the awful industrial ag conditions that exist, all of that, but for me, with no first-hand experience in that world, it’s all abstraction. When it comes down to reliably producing food, and something’s going wrong, well, you get pretty PRACTICAL in your thinking… You don’t want to be doubting the effectiveness what you’re doing…

So, I dunno. If I was starting up, and wasn’t going to be certified, and was faced with acres of rampant quackgrass, and considering the RELATIVE…benignity of glyphosate that’s widely reported (both scientifically and farmer-first-hand), I could see taking that course. And I’d tell people/customers (”I used…one time…”), at least, for a year or two after the fact (that’s just me).

Right now, though, a few years in, it wouldn’t be that easy, and mainly for internal reasons, more than that I actually think it would be a physically bad thing in that limited situation. Luckily, nothing like that is on my plate right now!! I’d decide for myself when the time came… (I should add, I’m quiet skeptical of organic certification as a regulatory framework, the standards are great, the rest is really…corporate big business.)

I’m not sure what kind of comment that is, if I conveyed what I’m thinking, but I’ll post it… :)

Decisions, decisions, and I thought gardens were meant to be therapeutic and calming!

I’ve used wood chips for this purpose with some success. The benefit over plastic and gravel is that they aren’t as permanent. I’ve had to remove gravel placed in ill-conceived flower beds and it’s not fun. Despite the plastic, in a couple years you’ll get some super hardy weeds growing in the gravel. I get a lot of wood chips free from tree removal companies (they even deliver it and thank me!!). It would be perfect for what you’re doing.

Chris

Glyphosates are strictly verboten according to organic production standards, as far as certification is concerned. Personally, though, I’m just not interested, so I haven’t so far ever even vaguely wondered how much “easier” it might be to bring on the pesticides. I guess for me it’s knowing that anything I sprayed would be killing off more than its target, and that would somehow affect the soil balance that I’m slowly learning to feel/understand, and I’d lose any natural frame of reference. Luckily, I haven’t been overrun by anything: weeds, bugs, disease. If I had crops completely wiped out by something I couldn’t stop with row cover, or replanting, or hand picking, my faith in organic ways might be a little shaken. Who knows? Anything’s possible. But not so far! :)

For the grass-free strips, I’ll probably lay down some cover after it’s cleared, like heavy opaque plastic under gravel…