Gardening with Allen: Combat weeds in small doses

I just finished my spring planting and everything looked nice and now weeds are coming up everywhere. How do you keep the weeds under control?

It seems like we just get everything planted and a week or two later the weeds are popping up everywhere. Soil temperature is warm enough that the hot weather weeds are sprouting now. It seems like weeds grow at least twice as fast as ornamental plants and vegetables. That’s because they actually do. Many weeds are more tolerant of hot weather and have a different metabolism that allows them to continue growing in hot weather when other plants slow down.

There are several ways to reduce weed growth, but I still find myself pulling or cultivating weeds. I am one of those crazy gardeners who actually enjoys weeding. However, weeding for several hours on a hot day can be drudgery. So I do several things to make weeding easier.

Weeds are much easier to pull or hoe when they are small. I try to keep on top of weeding by doing a little bit regularly. I like to get up early, throw on my gardening clothes and weed for 20 minutes almost every day. If you have less weeding, try three days a week, or a shorter time period. Weeding when it is cool is always easier. If I need to weed later in the day, I work on the west side in the morning and east side in the afternoon, so I am working in the shade.

I also pull or dig a few weeds while I am cutting flowers, harvesting vegetables and berries, or just walking around enjoying the garden and landscape. Almost every time I come home, I end up with a handful of weeds by the time I reach the front door.

Trifluralin, sold as Preen and other brands, is widely used in shrub and flower beds and vegetable gardens to prevent new weed growth. I prefer to use as few chemicals as possible, so I keep mulch or bark dust at least 2 inches deep. Most weed seeds need light to sprout so mulching eliminates about 90 percent of new weeds.

I use grass clippings or corn gluten in my vegetables and fruits. I have made beds around all my trees and shrubs to reduce lawn trimming. If you use weed barrier fabric covered with bark around trees and shrubs there are even fewer weeds. After a year or two, a few weed seeds blow into the bark and sprout. However, they are very shallow rooted and easily removed.

Lawns have a lot fewer weeds if you raise the mowing height to 2 inches. Again, the shade reduces weed seed germination. There may even be so few that you can hand dig them rather than applying lawn weed killer. Tools are available that remove dandelions and similar weeds without even bending.

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