I am trying to manage a permaculture garden. The flat area with nice soil is doing a good job, however grass has invaded and is competing strongly with my crops. At this point my Carrots, Greens and Radishes have battled for niche space against grass and I’m keeping attentive to how this drama unfolds.
I’m assuming to deal with this area next year I should put down a layer of straw to dissuade grass seeds from coming up. I figure I’ll start my plants outside of the bed and then transfer them after they have grown taller than the straw.
However, as one of the permaculture principles is to learn from how nature wants to act, I wonder if anyone here can tell me what the wild grass doing so well in the garden can tell me. In other areas the only plants that are doing well are milkweed, legumes and squash (which from what I understand means that the soil needs Nitrogen). I’ll be cover cropping those areas with a slurry of red-clover seed to fix nitrogen this winter.
In the end my question is… does the grass growing well in the flat garden area indicate that the soil is healthy with good nutrient balance or does wild grass fill a niche which tells me of specific soil challenges?
