WEED IT BEFORE YOU SEED IT

All this heat and rain has nurtured a new generation of weeds the size of small cats in my perennial border. Fortunately, because the soil is damp, the weeds have been satisfyingly easy to pull out. Not so easy to extricate is convolvulus which has snuck through from the neighbours’ and is doing its best strangulation work. I’m going to take a leaf out of colleague Barbara Smith’s book and tack black plastic around the bottom of the fence line to provide a barrier.

Mostly weeds are just

plants growing in the wrong place, but if they’re hogging space, strangling your plants or just unsightly, dig, hoe or fork them out, roots and all. Adding a 50mm layer of mulch to the soil will help prevent new weeds from emerging.

Compost any weeds without seeds. If you have noxious weeds, such as tradescantia, place the weeds in a plastic rubbish bag with a handful of soil and water, tie up the top and leave them for several months until they’re dead as doornails. Find out more about invasive weeds at weedbusters.org.nz.