Every garden has its fair share of weeds. These weeds can come in a variety of forms from thistles to dandelions. If you don’t take measures to remove weeds from your garden, they will take over. But just how can you win the war against weeds? This post offers a few tips for keeping your garden as weed-free as possible.
Cover soil beds in mulch
Covering soil in mulch can form a barrier against weeds. Mulch is typically a layer of biodegradable solid materials such as bark chips, straw, leaves or grass cuttings. This barrier prevents seeds from unwanted plants from reaching the soil. In doing so, weeds are unable to take roots in your flower beds or your plant pots. Applying mulch to bare soil can also have other benefits such as preventing water evaporation, protecting plant roots from frost, reducing waterlogging and providing soil with nutrients. Check out this Garden Health guide to mulch for mulching tips.
Try weed barriers
An alternative option to using mulch is to use a weed barrier. This is a layer of porous plastic or fabric that sits over your flower beds or plant pots. Holes can be placed in it for stalks from desirable plants to grow through. Any weeds that may have already taken roots are unable to grow through the barrier and will die off as they are starved of sunlight. Weed barriers can also prevent new weeds from getting in. The downside of weed barriers is that they don't have the same natural look as mulch and don’t provide your soil with any additional nutrients.
Explore different herbicides
Herbicides are chemicals designed to kill off certain plants. While some herbicides are capable of killing off anything organic, others are specially formulated to target specific weeds while keeping other plants alive. An example is this Certainty herbicide for poa annua control. When choosing herbicides to use, compare online reviews and read warning information to make sure that a herbicide won’t kill off the wrong plants. Some herbicides may struggle to be absorbed by certain types of soil, while others may need to be applied at certain times. It could be worth trying different types of herbicide to see what is most effective.
Apply boiling water
If you’re looking for a cheap DIY herbicide that doesn’t involve any chemicals, you could consider simply using boiling water. When you pour boiling water onto a weed, it damages the plant’s cells and removes its protective coating. Applying boiling water every day for 7 to 10 days will eventually kill off the target plant. If you’ve got a kettle, this will allow you to accurately pour the water onto the plant (you want to avoid splashing other plants, as it could damage these too). Boiling water is effective on young shallow weeds but may not be effective on older deep-rooted weeds.
Spray with vinegar
Vinegar is acidic and can help kill off weeds in your garden. This makes it a great organic DIY herbicide. Household vinegar is usually not strong enough to destroy weeds, so you will need to buy concentrated vinegar. Pour this into a spray bottle that you can then target weeds with. As with using boiling water, spraying plants with vinegar won’t have immediate effects - you’ll need to keep reapplying vinegar over several days to make sure the weed is truly killed off. Vinegar also typically only works against shallow young weeds and not old deep-rooted weeds.
Invest in weeding tools
One of the simplest and most effective ways to remove weeds - particularly deep-rooted weeds like thistles - is to pull them out of the ground. There are specialist long-handled weeding tools that you can buy that can prevent you from having to bend over. Spades and forks are the most traditional tools for the job. More modern solutions contain claws attached to long handles, which you can use to directly pull out of the weed at the roots. Other tools like strimmers and power washers can also be used to kill weeds, but may not have the accuracy when trying to target small individual weeds. In some cases, you may not have to completely pull out weeds to kill them - simply lopping off their heads could stop them from growing.
Pull them out by hand
Some gardeners prefer to simply pull weeds out by hand. This can be monotonous, but it can be an effective way to fully remove weeds - our hands are one of the best tools we have when it comes to grabbing and pulling out objects of different sizes. Of course, you’ll likely want to wear some thick gardening gloves when doing this - particularly when pulling out nettles or thistles. Use a bag to deposit each of these weeds in and consider using them as compost. You can read more about pulling weeds by hand here.
Know when to embrace weeds
There are cases where one gardener’s weed is another gardener’s pride and joy. Some gardeners love nettles - although they sting, they are known to attract butterflies to gardens. Similarly, a lot of gardeners find dandelions pretty and don’t mind these flowers taking over their lawn. If your neighbors are keen gardeners, you could also find that some of their plants end up spreading into your garden. Some of these ‘invasive’ plants may actually be quite pretty and worth nurturing - while you may not want a begonia sprouting in the middle of your lawn, it could be worth relocating this plant to another area of your garden rather than killing it. Of course, if too many of these plants start growing in your lawn, removing them may be justified.
Conclusion
Clearly there are lots of different ways in which you can deal with weeds. If you’ve been getting lots of unwanted plants sprouting in your garden, consider experimenting with some of the above strategies. Remember that different types of weeds may require different types of weed removal approaches - ‘root weeds’ are often much harder to get rid of than ‘seed weeds’.
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