Every year thousands of new gardeners discover the joy of gardening.
They clear soil, make beds and wait for green beauty to surround them. It's all good fun until the weeds show up - and show up they do, usually in mass. Before they know it, they are surrounded with a battlefield onto which march an army of weeds.
Every garden grows weeds, but like anything, if you understand their growth patterns, their impact and lifecycle, you can use techniques to manage the weeds in your landscape successfully.
A weed is a highly aggressive in your face plant that often flourish, while their weaker cousins - the cultivated garden plants - languish despite a gardeners best intentions. It's a plant that is a nuisance or one that causes injury to people, animals or a desired crop.
"How did I get so many weeds?" a well-intentioned soul wonders. Well frankly, weeds are everywhere. Some weed seed is airborne and is spread by wind, some in the droppings of birds, winged seeds from trees like ash and maple and some as if by Mother Nature's parachutes (dandelion, thistle and fleabane).
Many weeds lay in wait for the unsuspecting gardener to disturb or cultivate the soil. These seeds are usually deep in the soil and begin to thrive and grow when we clear the earth and bring them closer to food and light. Constantly cultivating and moving your soil around actually increases the amount of weeds in a garden.
A surprising number of weeds travel the world in feed and seed, on equipment, in ships, or the stomachs of animals. Once these weeds get a foothold in a new area, they spread rapidly by wind, water, animals, trade goods and equipment.
The first step in fighting weeds is to try and accurately identify the plant that is giving you problems. A little time spent with a good reference book or online will help you put a name to the weed. Once you know a plant you can then gather important details about its life cycle and how it spreads in your environment.
Understanding the life cycle of the weed is key. Most gardens have a mix of annual and perennial weeds with a few biennials thrown in to confuse us.
Here is the plan of attack when dealing with any weed:
1. Try and prevent the introduction of new weeds.
2. Discourage weeds so they cannot compete with your desired crop/plants.
3. Stop weeds from going to seed, thus reducingthe weed seed burden in the soil.
People always ask me what to do about a certain weed and the glib answer is to remove it. You must weed in order to eradicate the population. I prefer hand pulling to tilling, and if it is done early in the season, you can dramatically lower the amount of weeds in your garden.
When planting garden beds, design them with tightly planted areas so they will have few bare spots of open soil for weeds to compete.
Shading by other plants is very effective in preventing certain weed species from germinating.
Mulch is a great weed suppressant. Mulch material can be organic like shredded bark or leaves, compost or newspaper, or synthetic like landscape material or plastic. This should seriously reduce your weed pulling time.
Never let a weed go to seed. Even if you don't remove the entire weed from the root, taking off its flower head before it goes to seed destroys thousands of seeds, which will never germinate.
There is an old saying that one year of weeds leads to seven years of hoeing. Eliminating weeds before they spread will save you time and a great deal of work.
