Once your vegetable garden is embed , you ’ll have just a few on-going chores : watering , pick and weed . None of these motivation be onerous ( and , of course , picking vegetables is just a joy ! ) but weeding is sometimes viewed as a Brobdingnagian labor . It ’s not — and there are way you’re able to cut your time spend weeding and increase your weed efficiency .
Why Weed ?
The understanding to weed your vegetable garden can be summed up in one word : competition . If you do n’t remove weeds , they will vie with your seedlings for water and nutrition , resulting in smaller plants , few veggie and greater susceptibility to disease . And , weeds are pretty good competitors , as anyone who has seen turfgrass get take over by creeping Charlie can testify . Removing weeds — and remove them when they are unseasoned — will help your plants get the nutrition they need .
Preventing Weeds
The easiest path to divvy up with weeds is to prevent them . you could prevent widow’s weeds in a new bed by lay down thick a level of wet newspaper or composition board and then putting your planting mix on top of that , as in a raised seam . While it ’s too late for this spring , you may also foreclose weeds by weeding your vegetable garden thoroughly in the fall . Every weed you pick in October and November , hold open 10 weeds in spring , I ’ve been recite .
Once your seedling are established , you’re able to conquer skunk by mulch around flora . Do n’t do this until the soil is warmed up , though , especially in beds that will uprise ardent season crops , such as tomatoes . Mulch can keep the grime coolheaded and you want it lovesome enough for the vegetables . Another selection is to allow the locoweed grow first by watering a bottom well , then waiting until the green goddess sprout and cleaning them all out before plant your seedling .
Hoe , Hoe , Hoe
Despite your best efforts , some weeds will emerge . Doing a little weeding everyday will facilitate keep them at a minimum . When you peruse your vegetable garden each day , do it with a hoe in bridge player . you could cut off lilliputian weed seeded player or pull them up . There are a variety of tools for weed , from hand tools like the CobraHead ( a personal dearie of mine ) to standup tools , such as the Winged Weeder , favored byLee Reich , who wrote about it in his article on 13 Must - Have Garden Tools in the January / February issue ofNorthern Gardener.(you’re able to read the article in our newfangled digital version by come the link . ) How ever you like to weed , look for a tool that ’s comfy for you to cover and that swerve off the weed at the grease level .
Weedless Gardening
Back in 2009 , Lee wrote another clause forNorthern Gardeneron what he bid “ weedless gardening . ” This method acting emphasizes four principles : suffocate weeds by regular program of constitutional mulches , not till the dirt to expose skunk come to light and therefore give them a probability to burgeon forth , minimizing ground compaction and using trickle irrigation so that water goes only where the works are and not in area where weed seeds might be conceal . you could say more about this method acting in Lee ’s al-Qur’an , Weedless Gardening(Workman Publishing , 2001 ) .
