Tips For Effective Weed Removal
Proven Methods For Successful Weed Control
If you were to track every hour spent working on your garden, you would probably find that a large portion of the was spent on removing weeds. And while the first few weeks of tearing up these pesky lawn destroyers can prove mildly satisfying, it soon just turns into a tedious chore. Even more maddening—you are just a few simple strategies away from your garden not needing weeds anymore. Tree Service Oregon provides expert advice about removing weeds.
What’s that? Does a garden need weeds? Weeds are nature’s healing remedy for sites that are in a wounded, plantless state, but weeds and gardeners have different ideas of what makes for a good recovery. Armed with a better understanding of weeds and the strategies outlined here, you can win every future skirmish, giving you more time to enjoy your well-groomed garden.
Let Sleeping Weeds Stay Dormant
Kill weeds at their roots but leave the soil—and dormant weed seeds—largely undisturbed for better weed control.
Every square centimeter of your garden contains weed seeds, but only those in the top inch or two get enough light and water to trigger sprouting. Digging and cultivating brings these embedded weed seeds to the surface, so assume weed seeds are there ready to erupt, like ants from an upset anthill, every time you disturb or stir up a patch of ground. Dig only when you need to and immediately salve the disturbed spot with plants or mulch to prevent these hidden mines from sprouting.
Mulch For Your (Lawn’s) Life
Mulch benefits plants by keeping the soil moist and cool while depriving weeds of light. Organic mulch, in particular, can actually bring in crickets and carabid beetles, which seek out and devour weed seeds at an impressive rate..
Some light can pass through chunky mulches, and often you will discover—too late—that the mulch you used was also laced with weed seeds. It’s important to replenish the mulch as often as possible to keep it about 2 inches deep (more than 3 inches deep can deprive the actual soil of oxygen). In any case, you can set weeds way back by covering the soil’s surface with a light-blocking sheet of cardboard, newspaper, or biodegradable fabric and then spreading prettier mulch over it.
Mind The Gap
Close plant spacing chokes out germinating weeds by shading the soil between plants. You can prevent weed-nurturing gaps from the get-go by designing with mass plantings or in drifts of closely spaced plants rather than with polka dots of widely scattered ones. You can usually shave off about 25% from the recommended spacing.
Off With Their Heads
When you can’t remove weeds, the next best thing is to chop off their heads. With annual or perennial weeds, deadheading can buy you a few weeks of time before the weed “seed rain” begins. Cutting back the tops of perennial weeds, like bindweed, reduces reseeding and forces them to use up their food reserves and exhaust their supply of root buds, thus limiting the rate at which they spread.