Weed Control Facts
By Michael J. McGroarty, Fri Dec 9th
You are welcome to use this article on your website or in yournewsletter as long as you reprint it as is, including thecontact information at the end. Website URLs must be activelinks. You are welcome to use this article with an affiliatelink, http://www.freeplants.com/resellers.htm
Keeping your landscape plantings, flower beds, and nurserycrops free of weeds is a battle, but if you approach it with astrategic plan, you will prevail. In order to develop a plan,you first must understand how weeds work, and what kind of weedsyou are dealing with.
Basically weeds grow either from seed, or they reproduce fromtheir roots. As the roots grow outward from the parent plant,new plants sprout up from the lateral roots, creating moreparent plants and the process continues and the weeds thrive.Weeds that tend to reproduce from the root are usually moredifficult to control.
Weed control facts? Weeds are plants, and they function justlike the desirable plants in your yard. They need water,sunlight, and nutrition to survive. Of these three key survivalneeds, the easiest one for a gardener to eliminate is sunlight.Through proper mulching you can eliminate the sunlight.
But first, let’s look at the steps you should go throughbefore you mulch, then we’ll discuss the best mulchingtechniques to use. In order for your weed control efforts to betruly effective, you should do everything in your power to makeyour gardens as weed free as possible before you plant or mulch.There are a couple of ways you can go about this, eitherorganically or with chemicals. I don’t like using chemicals, butI do use them for weed control, and I use them for pest controlwhen necessary.
I’ll discuss organic control first. The first thing you shoulddo is remove all unwanted vegetation from your planting area.Using a hoe, spade or other digging device, undercut the rootsand remove the undesirable plants, roots and all. Then youshould work the soil by rototilling or turning the soil by hand.
Once worked, let the soil sit for four days or so, and work itagain. Keep doing this over and over as long as time permits.This process serves two purposes. It brings the roots that wereleft in the soil close to the surface so they can be dried bythe sun, which will make them non-viable, and it disturbs theweed seeds that have started to germinate, which makes themnon-viable as well. The longer you continue this process themore weeds you are eliminating from your garden.
Weed control facts? Depending on the time of the year, thereare a few billion weed seeds drifting through the air at anygiven time, so to think that you can eventually rid a garden ofweed seed is false thinking, but at least this process iseffective for the remaining roots, which are the most difficultto control.
With that process complete, go ahead and plant your garden.When you’re done planting you can either mulch the bed, or keepturning the soil on a weekly basis to keep it free of weeds.Most people opt to mulch. Not only does mulch help to controlthe weeds, but if you select a natural mulch it also addsorganic matter to the soil which makes for better gardeningresults down the road.
Before mulching you can spread newspaper (7-9 layers thick)over the soil and place the mulch over top of that. Thenewspaper will block the sunlight from reaching the surface ofthe soil and help to keep weed growth to a minimum. Thenewspaper will eventually decompose, and not permanently alterthe make up of your garden. Paper grocery bags also work well,so the next time you hear, “Paper or Plastic?”, you’ll know howto answer.
What about black plastic, or the weed barrier fabric sold atgarden centers? I don’t like either and I’ll tell you why. Forone, neither one of them ever go away, and the make up of yourgarden is forever altered until you physically remove them,which is a real pain in the butt.
Weed control facts? Plastic is no good for the soil becausesoil needs to breath. Plastic blocks the transfer of water andoxygen, and eventually your soil will suffer, as will yourgarden. It’s all right to use plastic in a vegetable garden aslong as you remove it at the end of the season and give the soila chance to breath.
Weed barrier fabrics allow the soil to breath, but whathappens is that when you mulch over top of the fabric, which youshould because the fabric is ugly, the mulch decomposes andbecomes topsoil. Weeds love topsoil, and they will grow likecrazy in it. Only problem is, they are growing on top of thefabric, and you are stuck with a ton of problems, like a weedygarden, and a major job of trying to remove the fabric that isnow firmly anchored in place because the weeds have rootedthrough it.
Weed fabric is also porous enough that if an area becomesexposed to the sunlight, enough light will peek through andweeds below the fabric will grow, pushing their way through thefabric. I don’t like the stuff. I’ve removed miles of it fromlandscapes for other people because it did not work as they hadexpected.
Weed control facts? Controlling weeds with chemicals isfairly easy, and very
5 / 5
