They are the bane of every gardener and are difficult to control – weeds! Everyone must deal with them at some time or another. There are ways to prevent them, some natural and some chemical. You just have to know which ways are best for your garden or lawn.
Weeds can be beneficial to some pollinators, especially in early spring. If you want to help the bees and butterflies, allowing dandelions, clover, and other weed flowers to grow in early spring would be a great way to do that. Most of the time, though, no one wants to deal with weeds of any kind.
If you do not want to control weeds on your own, you could call someone to do it for you. You could call a neighborhood teen to pull them for you each week, or you could call a weed control service to do it for you. A service would be more likely to keep them under control for you. They would have the tools to do it the right way.
This article will help you to learn some tips to help you control weeds on your own. It will give you some ideas of what to do. You can also do more research to find more ways to do it.
Weed Control Tips
Mulching – Mulching is probably the easiest way to control weeds. Placing a layer of wood chips, grass clippings, or other organic material on the soil will prevent most of them from growing. Be careful not to over-mulch because you do not want to harm your garden plants.
You could also use newspapers, ground cloths, old curtains or bed sheets, and cardboard to keep weeds from germinating. You want to do this early in the season so that they have not had a chance to germinate yet. This will help to prevent them from growing most of the season.
Crowd Them Out – You could also crowd them out so that they do not have room to grow. In your lawn, make sure that you have a thick lawn cover going on. In your garden, place your plants tightly together. This will leave little room for the weeds to take control.
Adding a groundcover can also help to crowd them out. There are many ground covers that can look nice in your garden. There is some kind of ground cover that will make any yard or garden look good.
Digging and Tilling – You will want to limit your digging and tilling. This will bring new weed seeds and you will have new ones growing faster. The more you dig or till, the more chance for them.
You could always opt for the no-tilling type of gardening. This means that you will not till during the season. You could also go for lasagna gardening where you disturb the garden as little as possible. Both ways will help to control the weeds.
Try Solarizing – Solarizing is exposing those invasive plants to hot climatic conditions. This is one of the best ways to control them. Learn more about that here. You simply add a black tarp or other covering over them – heat will collect under the tarp and dry and brown them.
It will take about four to six weeks to kill them all this way, but it is effective. The biggest problem is trying to figure out how to cover them without covering the rest of the garden. Once you have figured it out you will have a weed-free garden.
Fertilize and Irrigate Cautiously – Make sure that when you water your garden, you are watering only the roots of your plants. Spread fertilizer cautiously, as well, to prevent fertilizing the invasive plants. If you are not cautious, you can grow more of them than you want.
You do not want to be careless when taking care of your garden. Being careless will lead to more invasive plants and you will be stuck pulling them from your garden. Just use one of these techniques to control them.
Flame Weeding – One technique that you might not have thought about is flame weeding. Flame weeding is using a flame weeder, a pointer that is connected to a propane tank: https://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/flameweeding.html. You will then point this towards the invasive plants to get rid of them with fire.
This will not completely kill the invasive plants, so you will have to do this more than once. You also need to be incredibly careful with this method because you do not want to start a fire. This is an effective way to kill them without using chemicals.
Boiling Water – If you do not want to use a flame weeder because of the danger involved, you could just use boiling water. This is another technique that will kill the invasive plants. You will just heat water on your stove until it boils and pour it onto them.
Vodka or Alcohol – Mix vodka or alcohol with equal amounts of water. Put this mixture into a spray bottle and spray directly onto the weeds that are bothering you. You need to be careful with this because if you spray onto your garden plants, you could kill them too.
Conclusion
There are many ways to take care of weeds in your yard or garden. One way is to hire a weed service that will do all the dirty work for you. There are also many techniques that you can use on your own. You can use one or more of these techniques to remove all the weeds that you have.
