Our vegetable garden here in tuscany

creating an organic vegetable garden in italy
This is our vegetable garden in Italy. It was an abandoned area and, as you will note, was completely infested with perennial weeds. This series of photos will show how you can eliminate the weeds, without using herbicides. By using a layer of leaves, straw or even black plastic, you can block off the sunlight, improve the quality if the soil and end up with perfectly manageable and healthy soil. We have used chestnut leaves and they are particularly good for many reasons. They take a long time to break down thus providing a complete sunlight block for a long time. They also possess strong leaf tannins that render the soil slightly acidic (low pH) but the pH soon settles down after the initial stage is over.
I will be putting more pictures up as the vegetable garden develops.