Keeping oxalis out!

Dear Garden Guru,

I have very abundant oxalis in my garden beds. We just moved to this flat, our neighbors have just been spraying weed killer every now and again to keep it at bay. They haven't planted the beds and stopped the weed killer when we told them we wanted to plant the beds. I want to plant vegetables and flowers including, bulbs, sweet peas along the fence and Abutilon, clematis etc. Any thoughts? I have two sections of about 15 by 5 ft beds.


Dear Nalani-

You should attempt to dig as much of the Oxalis out as possible. Mature plants have many small bulblets at the base. Sifting the soil after you have dug what you can will help capture any loose bulblets. Cover your beds with the lasagna method of mulching. First wet newspaper, then cardboard, then compost or forest mulch, then more newspaper, planting mix, cardboard, then compost. You can plant directly into your lasagna layers. Any Oxalis trying to resprout will be depressed by the mulch layers.

Thanks for gardening with us,
The Sloat Garden Guru