Weeding the garden is not mindless work. This struck me the other day when my wife was helping in the garden and I saw her do what we all instinctively do to a weed: rip it out of the ground. That’s generally a fine thing to do with a small weed, but this was a big weed like in the photo above.
What then? The upturning of the soil just brought dormant weed seeds near the surface and gave them a chance at life, and so the effectiveness of the mulch in that spot has been negated. In essence, future weeds have been created.
Beyond that, the big roots could’ve been left in the soil to decompose, which benefits the soil by feeding the tiny organisms that live there (those organisms will make nutrients available to future plants), and by improving the soil’s texture and water-holding capacity through the additional organic matter.
Gather up the leaves and cut with a tool like a hori-hori knife.
Weed killed; roots left in ground.
You can use many tools to do the cutting (pruners, pocket knife, etc.), and this technique works especially well on thistle and cheeseweed too. However, be aware that it doesn’t work on every weed. A few weeds will regrow from underground parts. Bermuda grass is an example. It has parts underground (rhizomes) that are attached to even deeper roots which all must be entirely dug up. This is best done by moistening the soil and then using a garden fork.
As I thought about smart weeding, three other approaches came to mind, one being the removal of weed seeds. If a weed has formed seeds, then take them away. Put the seeds or the whole weed in the trash, in another part of the yard where you don’t care about weeds, maybe compost them, whatever. But if left, you will have hundreds maybe thousands of the weed’s progeny next year. You see the little guy in this photo?
Dirt hates to be naked. If you don’t cover it with the plants of your choosing, then nature will cover it with whatever blows in: weeds. But if you clothe the dirt preemptively, then fewer weeds can get a roothold, and those that do are easy to see and easy to uproot (or cut below the waist).
Below my fruit trees I keep a mulch of wood chips. Below my vegetables I keep wood chips or sometimes compost. I still get some weeds among my vegetables, of course, but the mulch definitely suppresses them, I’ve observed.
Don’t believe that a mulch of wood chips “robs the soil of nitrogen,” as is claimed in many otherwise excellent gardening books, including Pests of the Garden and Small Farm by Mary Louise Flint. The proof — or anti-proof, as it were — is in the pudding.
Plenty of wood chips under these chard plants, but do they look like they’re struggling?
If you’re planting vegetables in a new area of ground, you’ll thank yourself a million times in the future if you first use the stale seedbed technique. It’s as simple as this: After clearing the ground of weeds, water the area with at least a half inch. (You can use a tuna can to measure that.) Wait one to two weeks for weeds to emerge, then pull them or hoe them shallowly. Weed seeds only grow if they’re in the top inch or so of soil.
Now sow or plant without disturbing the soil more than necessary. Or if you really want to make the seedbed “stale,” then repeat the process one more time before sowing or planting. Few weed seeds will later germinate as your vegetables grow.
Left: Winter rain made weeds grow. Right: Hoed very shallowly; ready for sowing or planting.
Stale seedbedding is particularly useful to do before you sow seeds of plants like carrots or onions since you sow them close together and the plants are delicate. Trying to hoe or pull weeds among onion or carrot seedlings is tedious to say the least. I sowed onion seeds directly in the ground without using the stale seedbed technique once, and I will never do it again.
Spring time in Southern California is boom time for weeds, as winter weeds like grasses and cheeseweed are setting seed at the same time that summer weeds like purslane and spurge emerge. So right now, let’s use our gray matter along with our back muscle to ensure that next spring will require less of both.
Or . . . get the kid a hoe for his birthday.
I LOVE weeding after a nice rain! This past spring we had several good days of rain and it was nice to let the weeds germinate and then pull them out!
I have several patches of bindweed in my yard. It’s horrible stuff! I try to dig out it’s deep roots but it only seems to encourage it to pop up a few feet away. Any bindweed management tips you could share? Thank you! Love your blog!!
I’m so grateful that I get to say I’ve never dealt with bindweed. It sounds terrible.
spent the entire day chopping weeds… i was pulling at first but some of them had dug in so well I was taking out clods of soil and leaving little holes and I wanted to keep all soil on that bank right where it was – plus I am composting all the weeds and didn’t need to bring more soil to the pile right now. Never enjoyed pulling weeds as a kid but now it’s good exercise and I’m happy I have more fuel for my compost pile. Glad to know that I’m doing the right thing as far as chopping the weeds and leaving the soil undisturbed. Cheers!