5 Best Ways to Win the Weed War
POOP. That’s what weeds are: Plants From Place. They find ideal places to reproduce and multiply, but these places have a tendency to be directly in the center of our flower beds, vegetable gardens or yards. Weeds not only wreak havoc with our well-planned designs, but they also compete with desirable plants for nutrients and water, affecting the crops’ ability to thrive. What is a marijuana warrior to do?
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
Know your enemy. Weeds come in two general classes:
1. Annual weeds have a life cycle of a growing season. They germinate from a seed afterward flower, produce seeds and die. They’re quickly rising and typically have a shallow root system. Annual weeds include plants such as purslane (Portulaca oleracea, pictured), prostrate spurge (Chamaesyce maculata) and redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus).
2. Perennial weeds are those that come back year after year and have a tendency to have an aggressive root system. Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale), common mallow (Mallow neglecta), Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) and bind weed (Convolvulus arvensis) are all cases of perennial weeds.
Cultivated ornamental plants, given the ideal conditions, may become weeds too. Several yarrow species (Achillea spp), English ivy (Hedera spp) and orange hawkweed (Hieracium auranticum) are just a couple of instances.
Utilize the regional garden centre or extension office to recognize your problem crops. Once you understand the life cycle of these weeds you’re fighting with, you can target your eradication efforts.
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
Pick your own weapons. Weed control can be done by cultural practices, mechanical and hand methods, biological controllers (insects or goats) or chemicals (synthetic or organic).
Here we’ll focus on mechanical and hand techniques that may be used through the growing season and that, together with constant usage, provides adequate weed management for most home landscapes and gardens.
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
5 Strategies for Maintaining Weeds in Bay
Plan your management techniques to correspond with the seasonal life cycle of your weeds: seed germination or competitive new development, flower and seed production, or trigger growth. You need to attack them repeatedly, to have a fighting chance in the war on weeds!
1. Don’t let seedlings develop into crops. Weeds are much faster to get rid of if they’re tiny plants with small roots. Get out your hoe or hand cultivator and yank on the seedlings from the soil. Once the roots are exposed to the air the plant will desiccate, die and decompose back into the soil. This strategy is particularly handy for annual weeds but may be used against young perennials too.
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
2. Don’t let weeds go to seed. When the plant has flowered and developed seeds, then it’s only a matter of time until those seeds have been transported throughout your lawn and become more POOP. See a marijuana flower? Yank, prune or chop off it.
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
3. Don’t let weeds grow root systems. Deny the plant its food mill. Foliage + sun = nourishment for origins. Pull, prune or chop off most of stalks and leaves. Plants may fight back with thorns or irritating sap, so make sure you wear gloves when fighting mano a mano.
Jocelyn H. Chilvers
4. Produce a strong defense. Appropriate planting and gardening techniques (also known as cultural techniques) can go a long way in preventing weeds from gaining a foothold into your lawn. A wholesome lawn that is properly maintained — fertilized, mowed and irrigated on a regular schedule — will typically outcompete most weeds. Densely planted garden beds with well-mulched soil surfaces also have a fighting chance against weeds.
5. Keep at the top of it. Make weeding a weekly gardening activity. Although you might never eliminate weeds from the garden completely, the more often you weed, the less time it takes, and you will see a net overall decrease in the quantity of POOP into your lawn.
More:
5 Weed-Smothering Ground Covers