Digging getting into weeding
CALL me strange but I enjoy weeding. Others tell me they hate it because it’s boring or tedious, but I find it relaxing. It’s also a pleasant way to spend some quiet time outside.
Weeding is an important part of managing a garden so finding a way to enjoy it is important. Weeding is more than annihilating weeds. It also encompasses removing competing plants to make room for desirable plants to grow and prosper.
Last weekend I cut back or pulled out tired ground cover plants including alyssum, fleabane and catmint. This allowed me to get to some persistent weeds and also make room for iris and other perennials that are starting to grow.
A few minutes of cutting and tugging created space that not only looked cared for but also made room for new plants.
From there I moved on to emerging bulbs. My garden is a large old garden with lots of well-established bulbs. In spring it’s a sea of daffodils, bluebells and forget-me-nots.
For many people, forget-me-nots are weeds. In this garden, they fill up space that would otherwise be readily colonised by less desirable weeds but, if I left the forget-me-nots to grow as they wanted, there’d be them and not much else.
To manage forget-me-nots, I weed. This means pulling them out where I don’t want them to grow and clearing them away to make space for bulbs to grow.
The good thing about forget-me-nots is that they’re easy to pull out.
As well as weeding them in winter, I also weed them out in spring as they finish flowering. Left so their seeds mature, forget-me-nots live up to their name and spread everywhere and attach to everything.
Top tips on how you should weed
Weeding is fairly straightforward – you bend down, grab the offending weed and pull it out. However we can be a bit smarter. Too much bending down leads to a very sore back. Kneeling down is smarter, or stay upright and use a hoe.
A kneeling pad helps to keep your knees clean and comfortable and, if getting up is hard, have an aid handy. Sitting on a low stool to weed may be an option if bending or kneeling is too hard.
However you do it, the aim of weeding is to get rid of the problem parts of the weed and that’s the bits that reproduce.
This usually means weeding before the plant flowers and sets seed and digging or tugging out the entire plants including its roots.
Plants with bulbs or rhizomes that reshoot need to be carefully eased out of the ground as anything left behind will regrow. A blunt knife, small trowel or fork helps get out the entire root system. If the weed breaks off in your hand, don’t just give up and leave the roots behind to regrow.
While it is important to be persistent it is also necessary to recognise a problem weed when you find it. Some weeds can’t be easily removed by hand. Oxalis and onion weed for example are very hard to hand weed out as they have chains of bulbs well buried in the soil. They are better tackled by other techniques such as smothering them by excluding light.
Don’t over achieve when weeding. Deciding you’ll weed the entire garden in one afternoon probably isn’t achievable and isn’t much fun. Instead, weed a small area at a time and cover the disturbed soil with mulch to stop weeds growing back. Once you’re happy with the job, move on to the next overgrown place.
What to do with your weeds
As you weed, have a large bucket or wheelbarrow handy to hold the pulled weeds. Shake the weed free of soil (unless the soil is full of small bulbs).
If the weed can’t regrow and has no flowers or seeds, it can be placed back on the ground to act as mulch.
Other ways to get rid of weeds are the compost heap, the chook yard, deep burying, the green bin or local tip. Don’t toss them over the fence, down the back or into bushland where they’ll grow and spread.
Problem weeds that spread should be treated with extra care. Most can be neutralised in a bucket of water. Allow them to soak for several weeks then add them to the compost heap, bury or toss in the green bin.