Weed Control
Mulching Mania!
From my June TGW Fresh from the Garden Newsletter:
One of the tips I share in my lectures that most folks already know a little about but often don’t have the whole story on is mulching. This garden chore many of us think of as the finishing touch that makes the garden look nice. But it is really about, oh, so much more.
Mulching in fact protects the most important gem in the garden, the soil. Mulch helps to keep the soil cool and moist and prevents it from washing away. Soil without mulch gets dry, hard, and weedy. In general, it’s nothing you’d want to put your roots down into!
I love pulling back the straw mulch in my working cutting garden come spring. It is like a cartoon picture. All the heads of these little earthworms are poking out of the surface of the bed like submarines. It is hilarious-looking. Mulching provides cover for these good guys to come to the surface to work in your garden (earthworms, ground beetles, micro-organisms and millions of their beneficial friends). All of this will go on in your garden to benefit your soil. If you become a mulching maniac, your soil will keep your plants healthy, fat and sassy. It will all come naturally when you maintain organic mulches, and it’s free!
But, wait– there are even more benefits to mulching! When applied in a timely manner, mulching prevents future weeding chores. Before I give you the lowdown on what we do in our garden to prevent weeds with mulch, you need to know a couple of facts about weeds and their seeds.
- The bad news first–weed seeds can live longer than most of us.
- Each time you disturb the soil or turn over a fresh shovel of soil, you bring up a fresh crop of weed seeds and provide them with what they have waited years for: light, water and air. And a weed is born.
- Each shovel of soil is full of weed seeds. Because of their incredible staying and waiting power, we will never run out of weed seeds to germinate in our landscapes and gardens.
- Weeds spread by a couple different ways; annual weeds grow a flower and make seeds to spill in your garden to make more weeds and perennial weeds return year after year from a root.
- Every time you remove a weed, you are potentially removing thousands of future weeds.
So here in a nutshell is our practice and recommendation for the most benefits and the lowest possible long-term maintenance of the garden.
- Mulch immediately after planting. This means if you spend Saturday morning planting, you should spend Saturday afternoon mulching. If you wait until next week to mulch, those weed seeds you brought to the surface during planting will have enough of a head start on sprouting to push through the mulch you put down later. If you mulch that afternoon, most of those weed seeds will never sprout because you blocked their light. By just changing the sequence of doing your chores you can eliminate the majority of your annual weeds.
- Use several sheets of wet newspaper under your mulch. Use the black and white print, unfold, and fill a wheel barrow half way with water. Submerge the stack of paper, using 5-6 sheets at a time and lay in the garden overlapping stacks a few inches. Top with your choice of organic mulches. The paper helps to suppress weeds, is bio-degradable, is easy to plant through and is free.
- We use any organic matter that we are fairly sure has not been sprayed or treated: leaves, pine needles, pine bark, grass clipping, straw, hay and compost. These products are what are available in our area; use what is available in your area. I do not chop our leaves; I use them mostly in the pathways of our garden but also use them in our beds without problem.
We find that planting plants and mulching immediately and deeply is the real key to low maintenance.
However, if you can’t mulch right away as happened to us this year or if you plant seeds in your garden instead of plants, here are the steps to take:
1. When planting seeds in the garden, mark the spots with ID tags. You will soon forget where you planted the seeds and once the weed seeds start growing it is impossible to identify your seedlings and to stay on top of weeding.
2. Plants are large enough to mulch when they have reached 8-12” tall.
3. Immediately before mulching, you need to do a little soil disturbing. This stops any weed seeds in their tracks that may be sprouting even before they are visible to the eye. We do this chore quick and easy with our Swiss hoes, the razor hoe doing a fine job because of its longer blade that easily slides between plants and covers a wider path than the garden hoe. We then proceed as outlined above.
This crazy weather is standard for Virginia!
It is Feb. 5 and they are calling for it to be 73 degrees here in southeastern Virginia today. Might sound crazy, but in fact I have found this to be the crazy norm most years. We get warm spurts followed by very very sharp cold days or not, just depends.
All this means to serious gardeners is that stuff is growing out there on those warm days- both flowers and weeds–so don’t miss the opportunity to get out and work in the garden.
I actually planted some more hardy annual seeds yesterday in bare spots. What do I have to loose?
I am working on my seed starting calendar, and it is pretty crazy this year, we are growing a larger garden. My sister is coming out of the office and warehouse and joining me in the garden for the first time. We are doubling our production which is about 2/3 of what I was growing when I downsized a couple years ago.
Can’t get it out of my blood! I just love growing beautiful flowers for others and teaching them how to do the same!
Happy winter gardening!
Lisa Z
It’s all about the weeds!
It’s all about the weeds!
Weeds in the TGW garden is one of the never-ending problems we have. I hear the same complaint from guests at every program I give. The best solution I have learned through my years as a commercial cut flower grower is that preventing the weeds from ever starting is the easiest weed control.
Although I don’t always come through each year in all areas of my gardens, I do try to practice prevention in more areas than not. When I say prevention I am not speaking of any chemical products. Stay with me here—I think you will find this very interesting.
There is bad news and good news about weeds. First the bad news: you will never run out of weeds seeds. Each shovel full of soil as far down as you can dig is full of weed seeds; they are just sitting out there waiting for you. Each time you turn over soil or pull a weed with deep roots you bring a new crop of weed seeds to the surface and give them exactly what they have been waiting for: air, light and water.
I am going to share with you how we stop them before they can start- the easiest way.
Just imagine you’re going to plant some new plants, you have prepared the planting spots (see our preparing soil segment) and you plant them all. Your plants are in the ground, you’re pooped, and would really like to do something else now. So you figure you’re going to mulch next Saturday after your honey picks up some mulch later this week. Well- what happens during that lag of time between planting and mulching is that thousands of little weed seeds begin to sprout. By the time you mulch next Saturday they are strong and old enough to push right through the mulch.
Consider this: if you had planted in the morning and spent the afternoon mulching, you would have prevented almost all of those weed seeds from even sprouting! How’s that for easy- just do they same job you were already going to do in a timely manner and you will reap the benefits all season.
If you have a lot of planting to do, plant and mulch as you go along.
Another great tip is to use wet newspaper under your mulch. This really seals the deal on keeping weed seeds from sprouting. Have your stack of black and white newspaper sheets, folded open, a wheel barrow half full of water, submerge the stack of papers (this little tips keeps you from papering your neighborhood and I am speaking from experience!) taking 5 to 9 sheets at a time, lay down on the bed overlapping each other a few inches, apply 2-4” of mulch as you go to keep the papers from blowing away. The newspaper is bio-degradable, is free and most importantly is all so easy to plant thru.
I also have tips for planting a large area with small plant. Prepare the soil, apply the wet newspaper, top with much and then punch holes thru the mulch and paper with a dibber tool to plant. This makes quick and easy work of planting and also eliminates accidental smashing little plants with mulch.
I hope this will help you prevent weeds from getting a start in your garden. I don’t know about you, but we don’t have time for weeds!
Garden because it is good for you and your family!
Quick, Get the Hoe!
Go out to your flowerbeds and take a look…did you see them? Little baby spring weeds, that’s what they are, everywhere! They are about ½-1" tall and look oh so healthy.
You see spring weeds follow the same growing schedule as our fall-planted spring blooming flower seeds, except we didn’t intentionally plant these weed seeds. The mother weed plant that grew in the garden this past season lived a good life, went on to make a flower, which led to the next natural step of producing seeds to reproduce. As the seed ripened in the flower pod head, the seeds prepared to drop, scatter or to make their way to the ground in one method or another. Thus they plant themselves at the appropriate time to begin growing.
So those weed babies growing in the garden now planted themselves sometime during the past growing season. They have been waiting for cool temperatures, shorter light days and a little rain to get off to a great start. These weeds, like the flower seeds we intentionally plant in fall are what I call "hardy" annuals meaning they not only survive our winters, but they literally thrive afterwards.
My most pesky winter/spring weed is chickweed, of which I grow a bumper crop each year! Right now they are about 1" tall and it is a breeze to take them out with our Razor or Garden Hoe. Thirty minutes of hoeing now will save a day’s worth of pulling mature weeds in the spring—no kidding!
I know most folks think hoeing is a back-breaker of a job, but this is not true when you use our "real" Garden or Razor Hoes. When you use our hoes, you stand upright to work, not hunched over, and pull the hoe through the top ½-1" of soil, shaving the ground. This destroys all the weed growth going on in the top layer of soil where weeds seeds get what they need; light, air and water.
You will find after hoeing your beds a couple of times in early winter and topping off with compost and/or mulch, your garden is ready to put on a show in spring, without needing a weeding!
Want a real Hoe? Click Here
