Weeds are all the things in your garden that you don't want to see every time you spend time in it. Unfortunately there is no easy solution. Some weeds are particularly persistent and others look like they have pride of place next to your other colourful arrangements.
When is weeding at its most difficult? Winter is weed heaven. They get all the coolness and dampness they need to really flourish, whilst most other plant types go into their hibernation phase, so it's basically a free ride for the weeds.
Weeds come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from your basic grass types, like Rye, Fescue, Couch, Kikuyu and Buffalo and whilst these all look great when they're part of your lawn, they can tend to overtake to the aesthetic appeal of a garden space very quickly, so what can be done.
1. Get stuck into them before they become a nightmare, so yes that means getting down and dirty and pulling out those roots as much as you can and to keep on top of them you'll need to do this frequently in Winter to avoid the jungle that will certainly follow in Spring.
2. Separate lawns from garden spaces. You can do this simply by either putting in a formal edge (wooden, concrete, bricks, large stones or rocks) or an informal edge using a shovel to create a deep v-shaped separator. (I've used this method many times with great effect, particularly when I need to keep those crawling grass types out of the garden, for example Kikuyu and Couch).
3. When you weed you'll need a tool to get down deeper into the root area, so I use a hand held pronged fork (available from all hardware stores), eg Bunnings, Mitre10, Home Hardware).
4. Avoid laying mulch over the top of weeds. Put the effort into removing as much of the weed layer as possible and then apply mulch.
5. When all else fails and dependent on the level of weed infestation you're dealing with, you may need the assistance of a herbicide. There are the glysophate (Roundup) types and there are also some new organically certified ones on the market (try Slasher from Bunnings).
Weeding is no easy task, believe me as we do plenty of weeding for our customers, but if you keep on top of it, the rewards will be there to see and you'll be able to love getting out in the back or front yard and smell the roses (so to speak).
If you have a gardening query you need some help with, send me a question via our Contacts page.
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