Weeding your vegetable garden

Introduction

You've prepared your soil, made your rows and planted your seeds. Before long, your seedlings start growing... or is it a weed?

You've noticed they grow in a row and feel confident about what you should pull out: everything else.

It's a new garden. You feel motivated. So you clean it all out, and you've got a beautiful garden again.

As time goes on, you know you've got weeds, but it isn't too bad yet. Maybe this weekend you'll start pulling them out, but you don't. Because life happens...

Before you know it, you've got a serious weed problem that's out of control!

Sounds familiar? It's more or less what used to happen to me every year, so I'm guessing I may not be the only one.

At least that used to be me. I've learned to manage my weeds fairly well. I'll share my tips and tricks with you in this article.

Don't get me wrong. Fiskars makes good tools. I own more than one. But some are just "gadgets" and gadgets end up collecting dust in some corner of the garage. I bought my 80 year old father that exact tool, and he prefers using an old rusty flat screwdriver.

The tool works, and if you want to go around your lawn trying to yank out dandelion and thistles one by one, it will do the job I suppose. But once the novelty of this fancy toy wears off, you'll probably end up trying to sell it at a garage sale in a couple of years.

If I had to choose just 2 tools, it would be a stirrup hoe (also called hoola hoe, scuffle hoe, looped hoe or action hoe) and a small weeder. I've never seen one tool have so many names, but it works great at cutting weeds below the surface.

You can try to uproot each weed one by one, thinking you'll get rid of them all for good, but that's just wishful thinking.

Their seeds get scattered by the wind or lay dormant until you move the soil around and presto, new weeds.

A few passes of the stirrup hoe between the rows, and you'll be done in no time.

Compared to the time it would take to squat and pull each weed thinking you'll get the whole root but half the time they snap off and part of the root is still there ready willing and able to grow a new plant.

Some weeds do get big enough and have such a root stem that using a weeder becomes a useful tool. Especially useful for those places where a loop hoe won't fit.

There you can take the time to pop out a big thistle between your tomato plants or something similar along those lines using a weeder.

I included this Fiskars tool because I don't want to be knocking down the company too much since I use some of their products on a regular basis.

Cut back on your weeding by covering your soil

Your best free option is grass clippings.

You might have come across the "Back to Eden" method or laying down a thick layer of straw.

If you haven't seen this, the first method consists of laying down a thick layer of wood chips between your rows.

Why I don't use the "Back to Eden" weed control method

The Back to Eden premise is that you're recreating a natural process found on the forest floor as well as preventing your soil from laying bare. Both reasons sound excellent in theory.

The first has to do with the soil trying to protect itself from being exposed, drying out and dying by growing a "skin" of sorts with what we call weeds. It's not that different from the bark on a tree.

By laying down wood chips, the slow composting and covering of the soil serves a similar purpose as the weed layer. The soil remains humid and alive thus keeping it fertile and reducing the need for watering.

The downside is you end up with wood chips you can't till into the ground the following season because it will suck up all the nitrogen from your soil.

You also can't put it down at any time or anywhere because it will prevent anything from growing. You can't put it between small plants like carrots, so you'll end up with weeds anyways.

Basically it's only good between the rows, and it will help cut back on some weeding. Now if you leave your rows the exact width of a pass of your tiller, or plan to work your rows by hand without disturbing the wood chip pathways next season I suppose it could work.

Laying down straw not hay as a weed barrier

Hay is basically weeds. Therefore, it's full of weed seeds. Mix that into your garden, and you're just planting weeds. You don't want that.

Straw however is just the stalks from wheat or other grain without any seed heads.

Personally, I prefer using straw as a weed barrier instead of wood chips. The main reason being that I can till it right into the soil and let it compost without having to worry about mixing it in.

It works much the same as the principles explained in the Back to Eden method by covering the soil and retaining moisture, but it still has its own drawbacks.

I used this method myself for a couple of years, but it wasn't perfect.

Straw has many large gaps leaving much room for sunlight and therefore new weeds. You'll need a heavy thick layer and that becomes difficult to manage between all your vegetables.

Grass clippings as a better weed barrier

Do you have a lawn or neighbors with a lawn? Then you have free access to your weed barrier.

If you need more clippings than you currently have access to, I'm sure your neighbor will let you have some if you offer to cut his grass.

If you've ever dumped a pile of grass clippings in one spot and let it sit, you know nothing will grow in those clippings. All you need to put down is about 6 inches.

You can put it down in your pathways and save yourself a fair amount of weeding over the summer months.

At the same time, you're adding "GREEN MANURE" to your garden and improving its fertility.

Each of these methods will not eliminate weeding altogether. There are many places around your plants where you simply cannot put inches and inches of wood chips, straw or grass clippings.

But at least it will seriously cut down on your weeding time throughout the season.

A few hours of work to set it all up can save you what seems to be countless hours of pulling weeds week after week.

Then holes are made usually using a blowtorch to insert the seedlings. It's best to use a wooden jig with a set pattern to burn your holes (like a stencil).

A scrap piece of plywood will do with (for example) 8 holes for you to burn through your jig at a time.

Another great advantage of a weed cloth is that it keeps your vegetables "clean". Especially useful for crops like cucumber and watermelon or anything that sits on the ground and could rot or get damaged by sitting on wet soil.

But unlike the previous methods, it will do nothing to enrich or improve the quality of your soil.

Final thoughts

There's nothing wrong with putting on a pair of work gloves and spending a few hours pulling weeds. At times, I've even found it therapeutic.

I've actually enjoyed getting my hands in the soil, being at ground level and getting to know each weed. The root size, the places it can and can't grow, seeing how invasive it is compared to others.

You can't learn these things by using a weed torch or a barrier cloth. But there comes a time when saving time becomes more important because you've only got so many hours of daylight.

Whichever method you choose, I hope I've helped you along with your decision.