Sowing onto nettles and ground elder? Help!

[user1485182339]

Help! I'm not a gardener. But I mowed down a patch of nettles and ground elder in the corner of the garden. I haven't removed the roots as it is beyond me; I need an award just for getting this far! What can I sow (or easily plant) onto the patch? Any wild type flowers or tall grass? Something I can do soon, that will look after itself, and can outcompete any nettles or ground elder that will come back? TIA.

Potatoes are useful for breaking up hard ground.

Just jab the odd hole and stick 'em in. Don't think about looking after them- you are after their ground crumbling properties more than the potatoes. They will spread on their own over a couple of years, by which time the ground will be easily forkable. You then have to try and get all the potatoes out, even the teeniest ones will come back! But they come up easily.

My DF reclaimed an overgrown churchyard using potatoes once.

Nettles show good quality soil. Easiest solution would be to cover with something like a large cheap tarpaulin, you can get them for a few pounds, stake it down and cover that with something like tree bark to hide the tarp. Everything below will die until you are ready to dig and go ahead with whatever you choose to plant there next year. The tree bark can be re-used to cover any bare soil and suppress weed growth

You've inspired me to use potatoes to clear an overgrown garden that is stingy choked. I wonder...

Right, off to find out!

Balls this thread answers my question as well. Ive got a flowerbed i dug up last autumn and planted some bulbs. I should have mulched, i didn't know i needed to and just throught that was it, It was clear and beautiful. Now its full of grass, ivy and weeds with bulbs coming up int that so it just looks shit. The bulbs being there make me not want to dig it all up again. But I'm going to have to aren't i???

OP, i had great success with a flowerbed last year by covering it in loads and loads of packing brown paper. I mean like loads and weighing it down with bricks. But they were only piddly weeds not hardcore like yours!

Grass will be the worst out of that lot, I'd say. There's no rush, let the bulbs finish then go for it.

Don't try to use a spade in it - you'll get nowhere. Hence my advice earlier in the thread to buy yourself a good garden fork.
I would also advise planting with daylilies to combat the ground elder (once you have dug the nettles our). They form a tough clump.

Thanks pickle
There is a little rush (but only a little one) as we rent so i like to get stuff in and sorted so we enjoy it before we have to move on. But i can't see the spring bulbs lasting much longer in this weather. So there has to be a happy medium there.

Yes op get yourself a fork, especially with brambly type stuff you don't want to touch its the only way. Mine has a few prongs missing where I've over levered but it still does the job!