Creeping Wood Sorrel - please help!

Hi I'm new here: My vegetable patch is now completely covered in the above pesky stuff ..... creeping wood sorrel. Its been there for the last few years and getting worse. I think the seeds were in some bags of compost I bought and have since germinated and spread like wildfire.

I understand if you dig it all up, there only has to be a few segments left in the ground and it will all come back.

I would like to try and eradicate it now in time for next spring.

I am not comfortable with weed killers but will consider their use on this occasion although we have a young child, a dog and theres quite a few cats in the area. If I go down this route can I grow veg again next year?

Very grateful to anyone who can advise on this.

 

Digging as much as you can is the best way to start. It's the seeds it leaves in the ground that you really have to worry about but these can be dealt with using a good covering of mulch to prevent germination once the plants have been removed.

You can also spray glyphosate if any new plants show through in large numbers next year but hoeing and hand weeding should suffice once you've got on top of the problem and mulched. They key is to prevent any subsequent seeding if any do slip through the net.

 

If you use Glyphosate like Axl said, you can still grow veg after. Needs to be done on a dry day when the plants are actively growing.

Getting on top of it in some parts of the plot, got another problem now, shamrocks, has tiny bulbils, lots of them & they break off as you dig them out. There was only one plant last year, there's hundreds of them this year.

 

Many thanks for your help, Axl. I'll get mulching and digging straight away.

 

If the veg patch is currently bare, would covering the whole area in a big plastic sheet (bricks to hold it down) kill all the sorrel off over winter ?

Or how about double digging ... put the surface seeds and weeds so far down that they've no chance of coming back ?