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Dealing with Weeds in the Garden

September 6th, 2016

I get asked a lot of questions about gardening, they cover a wide variety of topics, but one that is asked over and over again “how do you deal with weeds in your garden?”. It seems that people notice that I don’t have many weeds, which I don’t really, at least in the actually garden areas. It’s not that I spend all day, every day in the spring/summer/fall weeding, but I do spend some time at that task. Over the years I’ve learned a few tricks to make maintaining a garden with fewer weeds possible without putting in hundreds of hours weeding. I thought a series of posts about dealing with weeds would be a valuable addition to the blog.
Main edible garden 2
There are weeds in the surrounding areas, the woodland edges, the driveway, in the lawn. But for the most part, the cultivated garden areas are maintained weed free with not a ton of time spent weeding. My time is spent in reducing weed seed load, smothering weeds, and mulching heavily to keep weed seeds from germinating. In this series, I’ll be talking about the various methods I implement to keep my garden mostly weed free without a ton of effort. Originally, I was going to follow up this post with a week of posts, but then I decided putting it out there for questions first would be better. That way I can try to answer your specific questions in the series instead of in the comment section.

What questions do you have about weeding and reducing weed load in the garden?

6 Comments to “Dealing with Weeds in the Garden”
  1. Brenda on September 6, 2016 at 7:03 am

    I manage most weeds, but the one I can’t keep under control is oxalis – can you help???

    Reply to Brenda's comment

  2. PennyAshevilleNC on September 6, 2016 at 8:37 am

    THANK YOU! I am desperately in need of your expertise :) My area is small and pretty manageable. I would like to try cover crop in the raised beds this fall and maybe use cardboard to smother the paths? Look forward to learning from you!

    Reply to PennyAshevilleNC's comment

  3. Nebraska Dave on September 6, 2016 at 8:42 am

    Susy, I always start off good in the Spring and summer with heavy mulch and it does keep the weeds down most of the summer. About this time of the year the garden is beginning to look a little ragged as especially the grass starts pushing through the mulch. I’ll be interested in how you keep it maintained after the mulching. Strawberries are the most painful to keep weed free.

    Have a great day putting the weed control series together

    Reply to Nebraska Dave's comment

  4. mc on September 6, 2016 at 9:41 pm

    I am not sure how to manage weeds in the strawberry patch, without smothering all the runners. Help!

    Reply to mc's comment

  5. Wendy on September 6, 2016 at 11:33 pm

    This is the first year I have managed to stay mostly on top of the weeds, and that is only because we used ground cover fabrics between the rows. Otherwise, the smartweed would have done me in again. Everything else is manageable but the smartweed is absolutely out of control–any ideas?

    Reply to Wendy's comment

  6. Charlie@Seattle Trekker on September 7, 2016 at 1:11 am

    This is a subject where I would appreciate any tips that would make this more efficient.

    Reply to Charlie@Seattle Trekker's comment

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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