Life in a house with a garden may be perfect, but after a while, you realize that if you want to keep the garden beautiful you need to weed a lot. However, weeding is part of maintaining a garden, and the more you do it, the more beautiful your area is. The question of whether it is necessary to weed the beds is being asked more and more often today. In this article, we will discuss different aspects of weeding and why it is important.
What is weeding?
Weeding is the process of removing plants from a garden, lawn, or farm that are unwanted. Typically this includes invasive species (such as dandelions) and diseased plants (such as potato beetles). It helps to clean up gardens and farms so that only healthy, flowering, or fruiting plants remain. It also helps to maintain a manageable size for those crops which produce abundantly in order to prevent them from becoming overwhelming.
This process is a part of gardening that not everyone likes to do. This is a time-consuming process that takes a lot of your time to maintain the growth of your own plants, but you have to do it, otherwise, they will become difficult to manage.
Is weeding important?
However, many people think that weeding is necessary only for aesthetic reasons, that is not so. Weeds are unwanted plants that grow along beneficial crops. It is necessary because weeds are competitive plants as they reduce the useful crop yield by getting space, fertilizers, and nutrients from the soil.
It is necessary to weed the garden as often as possible, otherwise, if you miss the moment of ripening of seeds that will be blown away by the wind, you will have to fight not with one weed, but with many. Although the destruction of weeds takes a lot of time and effort, it is necessary to constantly do this, otherwise, they will flood the entire available land, which will subsequently lead to the death of cultivated plants and only unnecessary weeds will remain in your garden design plan.
When weeding the garden, it should also be remembered that weeds must be destroyed in the garden, between adjacent buildings, along the border of the plot, otherwise, their seeds will be transferred to the garden with gusts of wind, water flows, on people’s clothes, animal fur.
Does weeding affect plants?
In general, weeds do not bring any benefit. You should understand that weeding can significantly affect the growth of plants. It can bring different pests and diseases. That is why many gardeners weed around flowers and plants to prevent pests, improve drainage and aeration, and remove debris that could potentially serve as a breeding ground for bacteria or other harmful microorganisms.
Types of weeding
There are different types and methods of weeding, but the basic idea is similar: you’re removing unwanted plants from your garden. Of course, all these types depend on different factors such as area size, goals, the number of weeds in your garden, and so on. Here are the most common ways.
Manual weeding
This is the easiest and cheapest way, but also the most time-consuming. Weeds are removed by hand using the simplest tools. It is important to be careful as you can accidentally pull out an ordinary plant.
Mechanical weeding
In this case, special garden tools are used to control weeds. Mechanical weed control allows you to quickly remove some of the weeds, but the roots remain in the ground and gardeners have to repeat this procedure several times per season.
With the help of chemicals
Nowadays it is possible to get rid of weeds with the help of chemicals. Several herbicides are available in various forms, such as spray and granules. You should be really careful when weeding with the help of chemicals to avoid accidentally damaging your plants or other parts of the garden. However, you may not be able to get rid of all the weeds you want by hand. This is especially true if you have chosen a chemical that only kills the top portion of weeds but not the roots.
Chemical destruction of plants is a highly effective way to combat unwanted weeds in areas intended for planting crops useful to humans, as well as providing sanitary zones around important facilities. Chemical treatment from weeds is the spraying of poison, which after a couple of hours penetrates into the root system, causing the death of plants. In the days following the treatment, the plants begin to turn yellow and dry.
Flame weeding
Weeding the fireworks thanks to the heat that generates an open flame, the very high temperature released lasts for a very short time, enough to heat up wild herbs and thus cause the plants to dry out. This method is very useful for getting rid of herbs during the preparation of the seedbed, it can be a suitable technique to strengthen the practice of false sowing.
The destruction of weeds by fire and steam is more effective and less dangerous to the environment than traditional methods of weed control involving mechanical tillage. The use of a fire cultivator as an additional means of control eliminates the need for manual weeding. Some crops are quite resistant to short-term heating, so there are technologies in which a fire cultivator “burns out” weeds not only in the aisles but also in the rows of the crop.
Is weeding by hand effective?
The only way to control weeds in beds with densely planted cultivated plants is manual weeding. Freeing the beds, many people try to choose roots from the soil. Due to the complexity of the method, it is suitable only for small areas.
However, doing it by hand is often less effective than using a wedding machine. Some of the most effective weeding techniques are relatively simple, like incorporating organic amendments into your soil and rotating crops as often as possible. Moreover, some people simply do not have the physical strength or stamina necessary to weeding by hand. For people who would otherwise have a hard time coping with any other kind of gardening work, weeding by hand can just leave them feeling like a failure and low self-esteem.
Weeding tools
All weeding tools are designed to help the gardener get rid of plants that are no longer wanted from a particular area in their garden. If weeds seem to be taking over, it is important for a gardener to understand which tool is best suited for the type of weeds that need controlling. The tools come in different shapes and sizes, but the appropriate tool will depend on what you are trying to do. The common tools for weeding are as follows:
- A hoe;
- Tines;
- Rakes;
- Hand weeder;
- Hand fork.
Such tools are a great way to get rid of useless plants, but they not always can remove all the weeds. That is why you should keep an eye on the spot where you’ve just pulled whatever plant you have. If there are still weeds growing, then you need to dig around that spot and pull your weed barrier deeper into the earth so the new plants can’t get through.
How often you should weed
At the beginning of the season, there is no need to weed a lot. However, as the season goes on, you will have to weed once a week in order to keep your garden healthy. At this point in the season, you will see a lot of weeds growing in your garden so you may want to use hand tools instead of using machinery. It is necessary to control weeds for several reasons. First of all, it is much easier to pull out young weeds with roots out of the ground. If you do it weekly, you will be able to get rid of such weeds easily.
However, there are other factors that affect the frequency of weeding and they are:
- Weather;
- Plant type;
- Your preferences;
- Type of area.
Another great way to enhance your garden’s appearance is to consider interlocking landscaping. It’s easier to maintain and it still looks amazing. Landscaping without grass is an option too. It may seem radical for the first time, but if you’ll learn more about it you may give it a try.
Tips on how to weed the garden effectively
Weeding has never been a pleasant process but it is still an important part of gardening. And in order to do it effectively, it is important to follow a few tips and they will help you save time and give you more space for your own plants. If you’ve been trying to take care of your garden, and have found that it’s difficult to keep up with the constant weed growth, then these tips are for you.
- Plan your weeding before you start to weed.
- Do some research on the weeds that you are trying to weed out.
- Do the weeding before your plants are fully grown.
- Remember that some weeds cannot be removed by weeding.
When you know these tips, you will be able to take care of your garden. It is important to always weed your garden regularly because it can get out of hand very quickly. And just remember that weeds will continue to grow if you do not manage them properly so make sure to keep an eye on them all the time.
And even if this process seems incredibly stressful to you, it is still possible to turn it into something pleasant and beneficial. Before you start doing it, try to study all the available information, and then you will be able to change your attitude to it. With a little effort, your garden will become clean and healthy.
