How do you cope with weeds?

[KG Steve]

Hi All,

Hoping your gardening year is going well so far. My garden has been loving the rain and has never been so green in June, but a little sun wouldn't go amiss right now. If we don't get some warmth I may have yet another year where my onions come out of the ground, roughly the same size as they went in!

Next month in our Over The Garden Fence feature Edwin and Bob will be discussing weed control - more specifically how to control the more difficult weeds such as bindweed, ground elder and docks.

Once again we'd like to add your comments and ideas to the feature and would love to know how you keep on top of weeds. Do you use weedkillers, a sharp hoe or rely on hand weeding. Maybe you use a combination of all of those. Or perhaps you rely on mulches and dense planting. Maybe there is actually a place on the plot for some weeds as ground cover at certain times of the year to protect the soil and prevent nutrients from being washed away - during the winter, for example.

Let us have your views and we will publish as many as space allows in the August issue of KG.

[peter]

Bindweed, the weed that means I won't give up weedkiller. I have some in my raspberries and each year I have to disentangle it from the canes, lie it down in the inter-row space and treat it to a glyphosaye based weedkiller. It is reducing, but seems I miss one or two shoots each year, storing up next years crop.

Docks, dig them up.
Buttercup, likewise.
Couch, never rid of it as our inter-plot paths seem to consist of nothing else, so it romps in each year, sturdy edging does block it fairly well.

Horseradish, semi-immune to weedkiller and I never seem to get all the root out when I dig.

Ground Elder and Japanese Knotweed have not made an appearance in our site or my garden. I remember my father using "SBK" brush killer on Ground Elder in the seventies, it always seemed to come back and that product at the time (I believe) contained dioxin.

[Nature's Babe]

Where possible I apply a thick mulch of straw, dried non seeding weeds and dried lawn clippings and smother most of the weeds this also conserves moisture. It's easy to pull out any weed roots in one piece that manage to struggle through, as the soil is still quite moist underneath not dry and hard. I move the mulch to plant veg, replacing the mulch around new plants as they grow.
Couch or bindweed needs vigilence to remove roots as they appear, a neighbours untended garden gave me that problem along one fence but so far I have managed to keep it out of the raised beds that I grow fruit and veg in. Roundup is lethal to aquatic life and as I have lots of frogs newts and slow worms in the garden I will not resort to using roundup.! Peter's post appears to show that apart from the health risks to aquatic and human life, it is not 100% effective anyway.

http://www.ehow.co.uk/about_6797745_tox ... iller.html

Recent independent French research shows it also damages human cells
http://www.testbiotech.org/en/node/620

There are positive uses for weeds too, they can be returned to the soil either composted or directly before they seed to enrich fertility.
My chickens love dandelion and wild lettuce etc. Bees love the wild mallow and foxgloves that pop up in odd corners of the garden

[Beryl]

On the allotment it is impossible to eradicate all perennial weeds but they are quickly zapped with Roundup. Annual weeds are always composted before they seed. Most of my plots are mulched well each year so hand weeding or the hoe makes life so much easier.

Beryl.

[Geoff]

I suppose I shouldn't reply really; having been cultivating my vegetable patch for 27 years I don't have much trouble with perennial weeds, though the odd Dock does get in. I use a hoe at the odd times it is dry enough to be worthwhile but mostly I hand weed and put them on the compost heap. I never dig weeds in, always hand weed a bed before digging it. I do get a lot of annual weeds like Chickweed but I put that down to high fertility and sometimes dubious compost made from the weeds and grass clippings, probably made worse because I am cutting the grass less often to save petrol so it probably has more seed in it.

PS : I think you should ask the forum for advice on Onion growing! If you are regularly not getting anything from them despite cheating by starting from sets there is obviously something seriously wrong. I would guess the basic fertility of your plot is poor for some reason, mind I think they grow commercially on some pretty poor stuff.

[Redfox]

To weed my plot, I mostly hand weed or use the hoe. I have resorted to weed killers but that was when I first got the plot and it was very overgrown. Do have bindweed that loves to grow in the green house but I try to get as much root out at the begining of the growing season. I have grass between the raised beds so I get couch grass growing I just loosen soil and pull up as much root as possible.
Jane

[alan refail]

Depending on the type of weed:

Hoe seedling weeds

Pull/dig out perennial weeds

Pull larger annual weeds (eat some eg chickweed - excess is appreciated by my hens)

Ignore some when they are not causing a problem

Nurture some (eg nettles)

Use SBK on rampant brambles and excess nettles

PS to Peter and Nature's Babe: SBK does not contain dioxin, but, given time on brambles and nettles in uncultivated areas, it really does work. It does not contain glyphosate but 3,5,6-Trichloro-2-pyridinyloxyacetic acid in the form of triethylammonium salt. It does need to be used with due care, of course.

[thetangoman]

Spray..no way.... just a good old hoe hoe or two !!!

[glallotments]

We have had our plot for over 20 years but still get lots of perennial weeds - docks, thistles, bindweed, dandelion, couch grass and the like.

With all of this type of weed we try and dig out the entire root - not always possible but in that case we remove as much as we can. Any bits of bindweed are brought home and popped in the bin (not the green bin though).

Larger weeds that don't have such a strong grip on the soil are pulled out.

Where there is space between plants I use a hoe regularly to keep down the young weed seedlings.

Amongst seedlings and close to things like onions it's a case of getting down to ground level and hand weeding using a hand fork or onion hoe to loosen the soil if necessary.

This year we are also trying weed control fabric between the rows of carrot seeds to try and help keep the weeds down. We've also used this on our strawberry bed. Around some of our fruit bushes we use weed control fabric topped with wood chippings supplied free by our council gardeners.

We use a feed and weed product on the grass paths to try and cut down on the number of dandelions etc that try to colonise them.

We do prioritise and remove the weeds that are likely to outcompete the plants so sometimes weeds such as chickweed under the brassicas are just left to provide a natural mulch and maybe confuse the cabbage root flies.

We also have a nettle patch to keep the butterflies happy.

[peter]

Peter's post appears to show that apart from the health risks to aquatic and human life, it is not 100% effective anyway.

It would seem I need to clarify.

" seems I miss one or two shoots each year, storing up next years crop."

I fail to find all the shoots, as is proved to me later in the year when harvesting the fruit. All the inter-row Bindweed is gone, this year it was single figures amongst the canes where they're hard to find.

Dioxin, Alan I did refer to the seventies and like many other brands it was I believe reformulated, happy to concede my memory could be at fault as I was about ten at the time.

[vegpatchmum]

I generally hand weed, using a narrow trowel to gently loosen the roots of deep rooted varieties.

Under the hedges and around the fence side of the pond, I generally leave nature to her own devices and the wildlife seem to appreciate that.

On the gravel paths and beds OH will spray Roundup, if the weeds begin to get out of hand.

Vine weed ALWAYS gets a dose of weedkiller - much, much easier to deal with that way.

VPM
x

[AdeTheSpade]

Having recently become a follower of Charles Dowding's No Dig method, I now cover the whole of my beds in the autumn with my own compost/well rotted manure/bought soil conditioner, to a depth of 1 - 2" every year, without digging it in. This can be sown directly into, and the weeds come out either by pulling/hoeing/digging out with a trowel very easily indeed, especially if done when they are still small. The weeds become less and less as time goes on because the soil isn't disturbed as much and therefore weed seeds are not brought up to the surface where they can germinate.
For the bindweeds/ground elders etc side of things, I dig out as much as I can, then cover with black plastic or similar, and leave for at least a year, making sure to hoe anything that tries to peep out of the sides of the plastic. I would only resort to weedkillers as an absolute last resort, as I understand that glyphosate based products (eg Roundup) are harmful to wildlife, especially amphibians, and may even be linked to birth defects in humans.
So, it's a big harder work, but for me it has to be digging out as much as possible, and covering, to keep on top.

[FelixLeiter]

For years I was not convinced that Ground Elder could be killed with Glyphosate, but I completely eliminated some recently using a pre-mixed Roundup with a spray applicator with a foam setting. This worked like magic, killing it all from under a hedge, where it was near impossible to remove by digging. Ground Elder has a very waterproof leaf, and the foam makes it stick, is how it works. It also means it can be very precisely applied. I have to avoid the foliage of Ground Elder because it gives me light-sensitive rash.

I have completely removed Couch Grass from a plot simply by cultivating, the first year hoeing off anything that reappeared, and then carefully digging out, in the autumn, whatever had regrown. Any bits that came up the next year were easily yanked out.

Buttercups are much easier to get rid of than is assumed, and can be composted with annual weeds, no problem, because they do not possess rhizomes, tubers, tap roots or any other means by which they can persist. They don't even need to be dug out, but cut off at the base, just below the point where the roots emerge (the hypocotyl, to be precise). This is a particularly neat trick when it comes to removing them from amongst dense perennials, where they are often entangled, because it does not disturb or damage the plant you wish to preserve.

[Nature's Babe]

Ade, its good to see someone else favouring mulch and no dig, it certainly does make weeding easier, no hard pan and the better soil structure it creates certainly helps to minimise weeding.

[Tony Hague]

Anyone who knows what my day job is will not be surprised that I am a believer in hoeing. I find the Wolf push-pull hoes to be an excellent design; they easily slide ~2cm below the soil surface, the dished blade shape created the right level of soil disturbance whilst minimising friction on the underside, and the wavy edges bite better into a hard cap. The thin "legs" at the side don't throw too much soil, and serve as a bit of a side guard to push crop leaves aside.

I also dig - contrary to the no-dig ideas, I don't believe that I could control the high weed pressure in my heavy clay soil without. I also occasionally use glyphosate around the edges (not in cropped areas) - though the stuff you can buy at the garden centre is mostly so dilute as to be not terribly effective.