A primer on controlling weeds in the garden without herbicides

A primer on controlling weeds in the garden without herbicides

If you have a garden of any size, you probably do not look forward to pulling the inevitable yearly crop of weeds. Not only are they unsightly, but weeds leach valuable nutrients from your desirable landscape plants. Out of sheer frustration, you may be tempted to exterminate them with a commercial herbicide. However, your conscience may be pricked with the nagging knowledge that you're putting poisonous chemicals into your garden, contributing to further degradation of our common environment. Nevertheless, you've got to get a handle on controlling weeds if you're to have an attractive garden of flourishing plants. While weeds are the gardener's bane, there is a practical solution which doesn't harm the environment or pose a potential threat to kids and pets.

This solution to controlling weeds takes discipline, patience and persistence, but does not necessarily involve a great deal of time out of your daily schedule. Of course, you'll never completely eradicate these garden parasites an afternoon breeze can bring a new flock from across the road to do their thing: sprouting and growing into new weeds. However, there are a number of techniques you can employ to minimize the weed problem.

Most landscaping designs include trees, shrubs and perennial plantings, such as rose bushes and ornamentals. In between these plantings, you'll most likely have bare ground, a perfect breeding place for weeds. There are a couple of attractive ways to controlling weeds in this situation. You can use weed control fabric, available at any nursery in rolls you can cut to size. Weed control fabric consists of closely and finely woven, usually nylon, netting. This effectively captures the heat of the sun and smothers the wannabe weeds. However, you do want to leave the ground around the plant's drip line uncovered, both for watering and feeding.

A generous 3 inch layer of mulch, such as redwood chips, is another effective weed killer. You can also combine the two, using the weed control fabric as the base, and covering the fabric with the mulching material. Either of these two methods the combination works best can cut your weeding tasks significantly.

For flower beds, it's not usually practical to fit weed control fabric in between each plant, but you can easily mulch those beds. Mulching provides a unified look to the garden and also makes it easy to spot any vagrant weeds which may pop up.

With just these few steps, your remaining efforts in controlling weeds are minimal. For the few areas of your garden still vulnerable to weeds, you can spend perhaps an hour each week, pulling out the few weeds that make it to the seedling stage. Here's a great idea, especially if you're short on time. Get the kids involved, offering a bounty for every bucket of weeds they collect. They'll be happy with what amounts to additional allowance money.

Another place weeds tend to crop up is between paving stones on pathways. Controlling weeds here can be a tedious chore, as some weeds seem to appear just at the edge of the stones, hiding their roots underneath. One elegant solution is to plant a low-growing ground cover, such as creeping thyme, between the stones. This makes a fragrant and lovely solution.

Whenever you pull up a weed, never ever dump it in with your compost or leave it to dry where pulled. These dead weeds will eventually show up at least some of them in your now almost weed-free garden. Bag them up in a plastic garden trash bag and let them cook! Then haul them off to a disposal site. Controlling weeds is not so difficult or time consuming after all!