Deliberately compacting my paths to suppress weed growth?

[Samuel1988]

Morning all,

I remember watching a video of someone growing sweetcorn then deliberately stamping on the areas between the rows in what she described as the aim of suppressing weed growth.

I was wondering if this actually works?

Also I recall coming across advice as to not walking on your allotment when the soil is drenched as its bad due to compaction and so it got me thinking if I could deliberately walk and compact my paths to help avoid anything growing there?

What is everyone's thoughts?

Many thanks,

Samuel

[Bill HH]

Yes it works, I have some uncovered paths and the centre where i walk is weed free but the weeds come up on the edges, I need to zig zag more.

[Zelenina]

My Slovak neighbours have permanent earth paths in their garden that they compact with a small, heavy roller. It seems to work. I don't know if they use any other treatment on them. I've seen some Some self-seeded dill coming through. Every Slovak garden has dill and horseradish that never needs planting. We have a type of river soil that compacts quite easily. I think there must be quite a lot of silt in it, but there is sand and gravel underneath, so the drainage is good.

[Snow]

when I moved into my current house, it was a new build and we found that unlike the earlier houses on the estate (like the one my brother bought) they decided not to put in a path. So we get a garden of wet earth (not even flat, it was a mound). We got married the same year, and new job and all sorts so it took quite a while to find time for me to put a proper path in. In the meantime, we measured where the path would go and sowed grass seed in much of the rest of the garden (minus one or two flower beds) and the path was literarly just earth that we walked up and down a lot t the driveway. We hardly got any weeds on it as it did quickly become very compacted. It was actually a bit of a pain when it came to putting the path in cause i had to dig it all out. But yeah, it works to keep weeds off.

[arpoet]

Yes it works, I have some uncovered paths and the centre where i walk is weed free but the weeds come up on the edges, I need to zig zag more.

Try an extra couple of beers, Bill. Always makes me zig zag.

[Alicante]

It does work, but some weed seeds will germinate on very compact soil. So keep your hoe sharp! I have one path on the allotment which is just bare earth and it gets a few weeds but I just hoe them off, remove them to the compost heap and then stamp hard where I have hoed.