Removing weeds for planting potatoes

[Greentea]

hiya,

I've got a strip of ground at the top of my garden where I would like to plant potatoes this year. The problem is that is overrun with weeds and I was wondering whats the best way of clearing the ground.
I was thinking to get my next door neighbour to plough the ground first than rotavate and plant potatoes under a plastic sheet to prevent more weeds growing this year.

thanks

[veggiechicken]

What sort of weeds?
I've just cleared some overgrown ground for potatoes. Dug out the brambles, couch, docks and nettles and hoed off the annual weeds. I'm not going to dig it over, just dig holes for the spuds and let them get on with it.
Rotavating will chop up the roots of perennial weeds and may make your problems worse.

[Greentea]

mainly nettles but they're huge as this garden hasnt been tended for over 8 years, digging out by hand is going to be difficult as its a huge area and I'm no spring chicken anymore

i know, I thought rotavating might do that but I thought ploughing might at least turn over the ground

[veggiechicken]

The good thing about nettles is their roots are yellow and easy to spot
The bad thing about nettles is they're likely to regrow from bits of root.

Another good thing is they grow in fertile soil - so that's a positive for you

I'm no spring chicken either - more of an old boiler

[Mr Bones]

Unfortunately nettles are strong enough to push up through even the densest potato foliage.

[Greentea]

I'm sure I'll still have a lot of weeding to do even after planting as this is ground that's never been used for growing anything other than weeds
quite fancy the no dig method in the coming years but I'll be happy if I can get a spade in the ground this year

[Dalrimple]

planting spuds helps to keep weeds down because normaly there earthed up into ridges as they are growing and any weeds can be pulled out as you hoe up the the soil , I like earthing up spuds it's a bit like build a dam you don't know were they'r going to spout out next LOL. atb Dal.

[Thelma Sanders]

Being an old bird myself, I'd spray the nettles with glyphosate so they are dead (once they are dead you won't need to use it ever again, if you don't like weedkillers). Then get someone else to plough/rotavate it for you lol

I also like to lay cardboard between potato rows to stop the weeds growing there

[Cadalot]

I plant mine through weed membrane using a hand auger but you can use a bulb planter, but I would deal with the weeds first as advised by Thelma and then use the weed membrane to keep new ones at bay