Dealing with weeds
Jane Moore explains how to stop weeds getting a grip in your vegetable patch or allotment
The summer months are ideal for gardeners as it’s warm, often wet and sunny – perfect growing weather. Unfortunately, all those nasty weeds love it too, so this is the time to keep on top of your weeding. A lackadaisical attitude will lead to fruit and veg choked with weeds and struggling for the water, space and nutrients they need to crop well.
You’ll also be storing up problems for later because healthy, strong weeds flower and fruit extremely well, scattering their seed far and wide to germinate for years to come.
Get real
You need to be realistic right from the start - unless you tend your patch or allotment every day it will never be weed-free.
The thing with weeds is to root out the ones that are going to cause you real problems. These are usually the specimens that are flowering or about to flower, as they’ll be seeding all over the place in a day or two.
When time is tight I whizz around digging and pulling up anything that looks in imminent danger of seeding. I also clear around any young plants to make sure they get enough light and moisture to grow properly. At this vulnerable stage in your young crops’ development a bunch of vigorous weeds can swamp a youngster, checking its growth or even killing it.
I try to work systematically through the plot after that, clearing each bed as I go. I leave the shrubby areas of fruit bushes and raspberries until last as these have large, established root systems and can fend for themselves.
Early in the season I leave the nettle patch by the compost bin well alone, as they are extremely popular food plants for many butterfly and moth caterpillars. A good ecosystem means a healthy plot for an organic grower.
Which weeds?
If you’ve just started gardening, learning how to identify the different types of weed isn’t easy. But it’s important that you learn to do so because then you’ll know which ones are the real nasties and which ones you can tolerate.
I bet you can already recognise quite a few of the real offenders, such as dandelion, bindweed and horsetails. You’ve probably also heard of couch grass and when you start digging it up you’ll realise what it is, believe me! On the surface it just looks like normal grass but beneath the soil lie long white ‘noodles’ stretching across vast areas.
Digging out couch grass is a painstaking task, as every broken piece of stem will re-sprout and grow into a new plant.
Bindweed and horsetails are much the same and because these are perennials, it’s likely they’ll pose a problem for you for some years to come. They die back to their roots in the winter and grow afresh every spring, plaguing your patch or plot throughout the summer. Keep at it though because you will bring them under control and eventually be totally rid of them for good.
Annual weeds are much less pernicious but it’s the sheer quantity of annuals that tends to overwhelm the poor gardener. Groundsel, chickweed, good king Henry, sun spurge: you’ll get to know them all intimately over the next few weeks. These annuals grow rapidly when the soil has been disturbed by planting, watering and weeding.
Some species can grow, flower and seed in a matter of days, which means you really need to visit the plot at least once a week to keep it in order. I usually pop up to my allotment at least twice a week, knowing that things will calm down when the weather gets really hot.
If you’re not sure what you’ve got, take a look at these websites:
How to tackle weeds
Now you can recognise the weeds, it’s time to deal with them. Hand weeding is simple and thorough, but time consuming. Hoeing is quick and easy, but the weeds tend to re-grow and if you can’t manage the hoeing all at once, there are various mulches to consider.
- Weeding by hand is undoubtedly by far the best method but it’s a labour of love. It’s a joy after it’s rained – the weeds slip out of the moist ground with their roots intact. If you’re pushed for time it’s better to whisk a hoe around a few beds than to have one perfect bed and the rest a forest of weeds.
- Hoeing is fast and really efficient on a hot sunny day. Some people say that it only chops the top off the weeds and that they re-grow with a vengeance. That’s true at times, but a hot day can frizzle those chopped stems to a crisp and seedlings are slaughtered at one jab of a hoe.
- Mulching is a must on my plot. I use carpet and wood chip to mulch the paths and a breathable and a water permeable membrane called MyPex to cover the pumpkin and squash bed so I don’t need to weed between the plants. You can try using good quality wool carpet on your plot to smother and weaken large patches of weeds.
To find out more handy tips on how to tackle weeds in your garden, as well as more general advice, visit Gardeners World - Problem Solving - Weeds.
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