KEEPING AHEAD OF WEEDS
Gardening is supposed to be a “relaxing” hobby, and it is…unless you let the heat, humidity, mosquitoes and the weeds get the better of you. Obviously, gardening in the morning, after applying repellent solves most of those problems, but then there are the weeds to battle. Keeping ahead of them is always the first step, but by now I would guess that they have gotten the better of you.
Weed killer may be the first thing you think of to combat these unwanted plants but they could be difficult to apply around your wanted plants. What you must do is to pull or cut back these weeds and then immediately incorporate a heavy covering of straw or hardwood mulch, or our favorite, a thick, top layer of newspapers covered with a light covering of mulch or straw. It will be much more difficult to correct your weed problems if the plants are real close together making pulling the weeds as your only option. But if you have wide spaces and walking paths, you might use a weed killer such as Kills-All ™ or Round-Up ™ first followed by one of the mulching ideas.
Next year start off with weed problems in mind and use a pre-emergence weed preventer such as Preen ™. Even earlier, you could place a large piece of plastic, preferably black, on top of your gardening area and when the sun shines, your soil will become pasteurized which kills most fungus spores and many weeds. Make sure that the plastic has several days in a row of sunshine to make pasteurization work. You could even leave the plastic in place and plant your flowers or vegetables right through the plastic by cutting sizable slits and then tucking the plastic corners into the ground. Make sure the slits are large enough to allow rainwater get into the soil and then apply a light layer of mulch.
Think “Green” by using a couple of organic methods of weed control would include “corn gluten meal,” which seems to be mostly used for weed control in yards and vinegar as a weed killer. Be careful with the vinegar as it kills all plants and therefore should be applied directly to the unwanted weeds. Regular household vinegar is only 5% acidic acid so repeated applications would be necessary, especially on full-grown weeds. You can buy a higher percentage vinegar from a farm co-op store.
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