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| Weeds Aren't All Bad | | By: Lindsay Bond Totten |
| I know gardeners who actually like to weed. I'm one of them.
Nothing satisfies like a neatly weeded bed; improvement in the garden is immediate, sometimes even dramatic. Gardeners who like it often describe weeding as "therapeutic," so a little bit of it regularly can be a good thing.
Endless weeding is no fun, though. You know the patch I'm talking about: the dry sunny corner; the compacted soil beneath the hedgerow; the "hell strip" between the sidewalk and the street; the unmulched bed along the fence.
We all have one (or more), and weeding there is just plain work. Seedlings appear as quickly as old weeds are pulled out. The job is never done, and even when it is it doesn't stay that way for long. Besides, it never looks as tidy as you'd like.
Two hints for gardeners who may be struggling with an endless weeding job: First, the weeds will outlast you. Guaranteed. Scientists have discovered that crabgrass seeds can remain viable for 60 years. You can't wear them down or tire them out. Weeds are the "survivors" of the plant world.
And second: Pick your battles intelligently. Identify the problem areas that can be fixed and fix them. Let the rest grow naturally. Convince yourself that weeds are good for beneficial insects and that they help prevent further soil compaction and erosion, because it's true!
If you don't, all weeding will become a bore. Even the therapeutic kind.
As odd as it seems, weeds actually like dry, exposed, compacted earth. Cultivated plants offer little competition in poor soil. When growing conditions improve, however, good plants do better than weeds. Digging your dirt deeply and enriching it with lots of organic matter reduces weeding time significantly.
Try it. I spend almost no time weeding a 50-foot border comprised of deep rich loam and most of my time weeding one little corner of that border where the mulch wears thin because it's on a slope.
A gardener can offer further resistance by completely covering the surface of the soil. Mulch works well, but so do plants, closely spaced so weed seeds can't get enough light. Dormant weed seeds germinate reluctantly when they're shaded. But which battles to pick? Aren't most weed wars worth waging, if only to keep the garden neat?
The answer is yes, if the garden is indeed the beneficiary of that effort. What drives most of us crazy is the area just beyond the garden, the backdrop, if you will. Chaos at the perimeter reflects negatively on our efforts. If we could just clean that up, everything would appear to be under control.
How often have I witnessed a well-intentioned gardener obsess about a weedy patch just beyond his purview? That person may spend thankless hours clearing weeds, only to moan when it needs weeding again in two weeks time.
My advice: Either fix it (see above), or hide it. What you can't see doesn't beg to be weeded.
Make an edge. With a hedge. Or a fence or a mower or a wall. For instance, a neatly trimmed strip of turf surrounding a meadow planting gives a visual clue as to the gardener's intent and helps a meadow appear less weedy. A shrub border will work, too. Anything, so long as it makes a definitive statement. Weed everything in front of it and ignore the mess behind.
Don't weed an open area unless you plan to a) plant it (in which case, prepare the soil well), or b) continue to maintain it. When you clear an area of weeds but leave bare soil exposed, nature will fill it with weeds again, and some of the newcomers may be more obnoxious than those that were removed!
Reduce a future source of weed seeds by using straw instead of hay (hay contains all sorts of seeds; straw is what's left after the grain has been threshed). Mushroom manure (also called mushroom soil or mushroom compost) contains lots of weeds, too. And these can be tough weeds to get rid of, like thistle.
If other methods fail, mow the weed patch periodically to keep annual weeds from going to seed. As a last resort, employ a non-selective herbicide like Roundup . Remember, though, to cover the soil as the weeds die, or the cycle will just begin again.
(Lindsay Bond Totten, a horticulturist, writes about gardening for Scripps Howard News Service.)
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