Weeding CAN be Quick 'n Easy

Oh, yes ... there was that mention of ... weeding...

You’ll be walking through your gorgeous garden areas every day. As you walk along you’ll be taking in the colorful flowers here, the beautiful greenery there. You’ll look down and what do you see? A weed.

In gardening quick 'n easy, the key to controlling these unwanted items in your garden is to:

• leisurely remove one just as soon as you see it ... while it is still young, small and easy to take out

Take that very moment to bend down and take it out ... right then and there. Ridding your garden of these unwanted plants while they are small and before they can become problematic is the easiest way to deal with them.

When weeding, the best way to make sure
you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant
is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily,
it is a valuable plant.
~ Author Unknown

Make it a habit to leisurely remove any unwelcome sprouts from your garden areas a little each day or evening. In as little as 10-15 minutes per week, you can have control.

A general rule of thumb is to get them out of your garden within their first 3 weeks of growth. If you take one out as soon as you see it, you’ll never worry about any of them overtaking your garden areas.

Be sure to pull up roots when possible rather than simply breaking them off. Each year, you'll see fewer and fewer weeds and they'll become a minor issue overall.

If you have an area yet waiting to be planted, cover the ground with a 3” layer of mulch while you decide what to plant there. Lee Reich, once a soil researcher for the USDA and Cornell University, suggests keeping the soil covered. His article Tackle Your Weed Problems has a lot of good information and is well worth the read.

There are two types of these unwanted garden plants. The annual variety which live only one growing season, can be simply pulled out by hand. If you do happen to miss one or two of these, the season change will take care of ridding your garden areas of them for you.

The perennial type can recur on a yearly basis. These pesky plants, such as the dandelion, require a little more effort yet can be effectively eliminated by hand also. Again, be sure to remove the roots as well as the tops. The best time to dig out these unwanted guests is in the early spring before they get a significant hold in the ground and become any sort of long-term problem.

Remember: Take these unwanted plants out of the ground as soon as you see them or keep the ground covered with mulch ... or better yet ... keep the ground covered with more beautiful plants of your choice so there will be no room for these unwelcome visitors to sneak into your beautiful garden areas.

Mulching | Watering | Plant Support or Staking | Fertilizing |
Deadheading | Plant Division | Wintering | Add Compost

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