How has your garden grown this year? For many years, I welcomed the fall’s first frost to kill all the warm-season weeds and give me a fresh chance to manage the weeds for the winter.
I waded through the weeds, watching in dismay as hundreds of thousands of crabgrass seeds shattered onto the ground. I resolved to do better next year, and as next year came, with hoeing weeds or applying (expensive and/or difficult to manage) mulch as my only defense against the inevitable.
In my book, How to Have a Weed-Free Garden , I describe the methods I have finally found to manage the weeds in my garden. I wrote the book in 2018, when I was still gardening and not farming. I use the same methods, generally, on my farm that I used in the garden on a larger and (I hope) more efficient scale.
The primary method of weed management is weed prevention. Until I realized I needed to prevent weeds from ever germinating, rather than perpetuating the myth that I would, this year, keep up with the hoeing, only to find myself on a hot July morning standing in a jungle of weeds that were too big to hoe, did I discover how to manage the weeds and spend more time enjoying the garden.
Get your copy of my ebook here. It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers and $2.99 otherwise.