How is the weed situation in your garden this hot, muggy, August? For me it’s been a perfect summer for the weeds to just explode. If I sat still long enough, I think I could see them steadily elongate and develop seeds, which then germinate and produce more plants in a never-ending cycle.
Weeds love heat, and heat is a given in Blythewood. We have also had plenty of rain. I don’t know if we are officially in a drought or not anymore, but we must be close to recovery at least on my farm.
Rain causes two problems for the gardener in terms of weed management: first, the rain encourages weed growth, and second, rain prevents easy cultivation of the soil to kill weeds. This morning (as I write this article, it’s sunny and 98 degrees) the surface of the soil was dry, and I lightly scuffled my hoe along the surface of the soil to dislodge the roots of the weeds. No rain has come to reinvigorate them, and so I expect them to die in the sun. I know I would die if I laid out on the garden beds without any water, but weeds have surprised me before with their skills of resurrection.
I have worked extremely hard on the field my visitors see to eradicate and to prevent weeds, but my original garden behind the house is a mess so please don’t think I have won the battle against weeds. My teenage helpers have assisted in spreading wood chips on paths and they have helped me move black plastic tarps around to kill weeds. If you have a weedy, out-of-control area, the best thing to do with it is mow or clip down the weeds and collect any seeds to dispose of in the trash, then cover the area with a piece of 6-mil black plastic or thick cardboard and leave the bed alone for a few weeks.
I am embarrassed to admit this publicly, as I should have known better. I will share it with you because my response, whenever anyone comments on my skill at growing flowers, is “I have made every mistake I caution you against, and the only reason I am successful where you might feel you are a failure is because I kept on planting flowers after I killed them and eventually some lived.” I make mistakes every day.
I terminate crops by mowing them and covering them with a tarp. After they die under the tarp, I pull it off, reshape the bed, and plant. This reshaping process allows weed seeds that were hidden under a layer of soil too deep to germinate exposure to the sun, and then they germinate along with the crop and create more weeds.
What I have begun doing is taking the tarp off, reshaping the bed so it’s ready to plant and leaving the tarp off for a week or so while making sure the bed receives water. The baby weeds germinate, and I tarp it again to kill them. When I remove the tarp in a week or so I have a “stale seed bed.” This extra step allows me to seriously cut back on the number of weeds I must manage. There are a finite number of weed seeds in the top layer of the soil, and if you kill the ones that germinate and prevent any from blowing into the garden, you can get control of the weeds.