Written by Charlotte West
With the summer, heat is starting to peak. Over the next two months, maintaining a weed-free garden will be the key to your garden living to its fullest potential. Why and how?
Well, the why and how are simple. If you have too many weeds, you are starving your crop of the nutrients it needs. Why give water to weeds when your plants are the ones that crave the water now? If you have let your garden go wild, you will for sure have your work cut out for you. If weeds have not gone to seed, you can start by cutting off the tops of the seeds and discarding them as soon as possible. Then you have the option of hand-pulling which is truly the best way to rid your garden of weeds for sure. If this is not an option, a weed eater will have to do. You will need to keep after them for some time as they will continue to grow as grass would. If you do not want to go the organic path, you can spray with an appropriate chemical, but please check with your local provider first. Using the wrong product can do the opposite of what you want. Instead of killing your weeds, the chemical will become airborne and kill whatever it touches if temperatures are above 90 degrees.
So maybe try what I did last week. If you have irrigation, flood your garden so that the earth is soft, and the next day tough it out and pull away. I did have to use a weed eater in a few places. If you have some cardboard or tarp, you can place it over the weeds and smoother them out, and in a week, you will be weed-free.
Weeds not only suck your plants of nutrition but are also harbors for bugs and pests. For an organic and fairly pest-free garden, clean out your weeds.
Also take the time to pull up dead plants that have yielded their crops for you already and any dead foliage from current plants. This way, before larvae start to sleep for next year, they have no place to run and hide. A few days of hard, back-breaking work will prove to be the best way for you to sit back and watch things continue to grow with maximum success.
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