Getting rid of weeds from the garden seems like a perennial challenge. Once you’ve got rid of one set, another seems to spring up in its place.
And if you’re the sort of person who likes things to be neat and tidy, that’s a problem. You want your gardens to look fantastic instead of suffering with weeds everywhere.
The purpose of this post is to serve as a kind of guide. It discusses the various methods professionals use to stop and prevent weeds from becoming a problem, enabling them to create manicured landscaping designs.
So, what are they doing that’s so effective?
Implementing Effective Methods
The first thing many of these individuals are doing is implementing effective methods. The idea is to prevent weeds from sprouting in the first place, eliminating the need to remove them.
The most popular way to do this is with mulching. The idea is to cover the ground in bits of bark and then use this as an infiltration suppression device, stopping weeds from poking up through the soil and accessing sunlight.
Mulch doesn’t get rid of the weeds entirely. Many remain dormant as seeds below the surface. But it does make it much harder for them to establish a foothold, making it more challenging for them to grow into adults that could eventually push through the layers above them.
Sometimes, it is also necessary to spray pre-emergent pesticides. These are useful if you know a large patch of weeds is going to arise and it will be hard to remove at a later date.
Manually Removing
The pros also use various manual removal methods to get rid of weeds. These involve physically interacting with them to remove them, widely considered a highly effective approach.
Hand pulling is common in professional circles. However, experts will only attempt it if they think they can get to all the roots.
Using a cordless weed eater is another option. These make the task of removing weeds from the ground much simpler, allowing for the removal of those with deeper roots and more established networks.
Then there is perhaps the most exciting form of weeding: flame weeding. This method involves the use of flame torches and throwers to get rid of plants from specific areas.
Unfortunately, this last technique is often too potent to use on lawns or in beds. The surrounding vegetation also receives a lot of heat, causing it to turn grey and brown in blotchy patches. Therefore, it is best used on driveways and patios where weeds are growing up in the gaps. In this setting, it can be highly effective and fun,
Laying Herbicides
You also often see pros using herbicides to control weeds, even in residential gardens. Most see it as a last resort, but it is necessary if things go wrong.
The best herbicides are those that target specific species. These often have expert formulations that get down to the genetic level to undermine the viability of a specific weed.
Pros will also sometimes use plants as natural herbicides. Some combinations can fight off weeds by themselves, reducing the need for any chemicals at all. Many of these simply outcompete their wild counterparts to prevent them from establishing themselves in the soil.
Then, of course, there is the option to spot-treat specific areas. This approach involves applying pesticides to areas with problems and then ignoring them everywhere else. Again, it can be highly effective but you need to know where to target it.
Managing The Soil
Of course, managing the soil effectively is a big part of how the pros manage to do what they do. It’s not just about attacking weeds when they come up, but making the substrate as amenable as possible to the desirable species that will inhabit it, and as unfriendly as possible to those that aren’t wanted.
For this reason, a lot of professional gardeners invest in soil pH monitoring equipment. These devices indicate the acidity or the alkalinity of the soil, allowing gardeners to determine what they should plant next. Acid soils can be good for woody, perennial shrubs that keep coming back year after year, and effectively fight off unwanted weeds.
Amending the soil can also help reduce the number of weeds in it. Adding various layers of soil and compost can be highly effective in some situations to get rid of weed-friendly conditions. While it isn’t possible to get rid of all of them, it is usually easy to remove the vast majority and stop them from growing, just by changing the soil type. Remember, many plants, like nettles, love highly fertile soil, so reducing the richness by diluting it could be an excellent method to make it more manageable.
Advanced Techniques
Of course, pros wouldn’t be pros when it comes to weeds unless they knew some more advanced techniques. These are usually for applying at scale, but they can still work in conventional gardens if you get them right.
One method is solarization. This technique involves covering your garden with plastic and then using the sun to trap heat and kill the weeds below (while the plants you want to stay continue to pop their heads out of the soil).
Another method is introducing more natural competitors to weeds, focusing on feeding them instead. This selective effect can be powerful, and tends to be one of the more sustainable interventions, simply because it is so easy to keep a lot of plants alive.
Following Up
Finally, many pros work over long periods of time, ensuring that they follow up the weeding that they do at a later date to check that everything is going to plan. They look out for things like new growth and constantly search for more sustainable methods for getting rid of unwanted plants in their vicinity.
Furthermore, many of the best adjust their strategies according to the season, something you’ll want to do as well. Combining these can be more effective and even safer for the environment in some contexts.
