3 Ways To Rid Weeds From Your Garden

Weeds, also known as the summer lucifers, come around quickly and they come to take over. They scatter across your lawn and make your garden look like an orphan within a few weeks. Lucky for you, there are techniques you can opt for to reduce and ultimately eliminate them. We’ve put together the three most effective and drudgery-free means to rid weeds from your garden. So, if you were fretting about how to get rid of them, it’s your time to shine.

Use Mulch

Mulch is a mixture of shredded leaves, straws, brown cardboard, woodchips, etc. The goal is to cover the soil around your plants. What good does that do? It retains moisture and blocks the weed seeds from getting sunlight so they don’t germinate. As it decomposes over time, it moderates the soil temperature and provides needed nutrients. Here’s the right way to go about it:

Make sure you keep the mulch a few inches away from the base of your plants. This will keep the rot and insects at bay. The key is to cover the rows between your plants in a layer so the weeds have no space to grow in the surrounding area. You can make it thicker but at least go for an inch thick layer of mulch. Organic straw helps absorb moisture from the soil, suppresses weeds, and eventually breaks down into the soil.

Block Sunlight

While the previous method works well in blocking the sunlight, you can also opt for covering up the weed soil with black newspaper or dark cardboard. You can do this in addition to using straws/mulch or compost and you’ll start noticing its benefits within a week. This works excellently if you’re growing a new garden from scratch. It’ll prevent the sunlight from reaching the weeds and eventually kill them off. They won’t get the light required to grow — don’t worry if you still see weeds afterward, there may be some perennial weeds but they won’t be growing any further and will eventually die.

Dig Up and Pull Them Out

Now here comes the step that might put you through some drudgery but if you’re taking our suggestions, we’d say it’s the best option available. Not only will you be able to completely eliminate weeds from your garden, but you’ll also be tilling the seedbed for grass — your grass may come out greener if seeded into a tilled seedbed.

So, how do you achieve this? We suggest buying a Hori Hori knife — it’s a Japanese gardening tool that’s excellent for seeding, weeding and digging holes.

How to Use a Hori Hori Knife?

1. First of all, you can start by pulling out weeds by the force of your hand. If you’re lucky, you may pull it out from its root and that’ll be it.
2. If you aren’t lucky, the weed will break off the surface but its roots will remain under the soil and you’ll have to get it out manually. Instead of fatiguing your arms with a shovel, you’ll use a Hori Hori knife to get the job done. Just dig your garden quickly with the knife and take the root out.
3. While you’re at it, make sure to give the soil some mechanical agitation.
4. If there are no signs of grass sprouts, you may feed the tilled soil some seeds and you’ll get your results quicker than ever.

The Takeaway: Are There More Methods?

There certainly are more methods to rid your garden of weeds such as using herbicide sprays, chopping off just the heads to delay their growth, aerating your soil, avoiding watering your weeds and more. But the ones we’ve explained above are the most effective and actually remove weeds or eliminate their growth at the source. If you want to get rid of the weeds for good, we suggest going with the third option. It’ll take some time and effort, but it’s the best option.