Weeds drive me crazy!!

Category: Organic Tips for your Garden | Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:58 am

Weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place, we keep spraying them and they just keep coming back!
Here are a few tips that might help:

Smother them out! If you block the sun the plants soon die, as they need sunlight to survive.Place newspapers, cardboard or empty pizza boxes over the weeds,If you are using newspaper damp it first, 6 - 12 pages is good.You can cut holes in the paper to plant new plants, and then soon the area will be weed free.

Cut Weeds Out.
Don't pull those weeds, just cut them.
Repeated cuttings will eventually kill the weed, by not allowing the leaf growth that produces food for the plant.use a stirrup hoe or lawn mower to take off just the top of the weeds. Because you are not digging down into the soil, you will not bring up more weed seeds.

Cook Weeds Out.

Lay a piece of clear plastic over the weedy area, anchor it down with stones. Then wait. The sun will heat the soil under the plastic and cook the weeds. In very hot sun, the weeds could die in 2 to 3 weeks.When it is time to remove the plastic, don't till the soil.! This could bring up thousands of seeds that the heat did not reach. Just rake lightly.If you have plenty of time and a lot of weeds, you can repeat the process. After the first heating till the soil to bring up the buried weed seeds, water the area to germinate. When the seeds start to sprout
replace the plastic and cook again.

Spray weeds out.
Weeds cannot tolerate certain chemicals, I use products I have in my kitchen as I am an organic gardener, here are a few tips:
Bleach Spray.
1 part bleach
1 part water.
mix together pour into a spray bottle. Mist weeds. This works well on driveways and sidewalks.For really TOUGH weeds, use Bleach undiluted, but keep well away from other plants.

Soap Spray.
6 tablespoons dishwashing liquid
1 quart water
Mix together into spray bottle. Spray weeds during the heat of the day to allow the soap to burn them. repeat if necessary.

I have many more tips of this nature, so if they appeal to you, let me know, and I will list some more.
Happy Gardening
Mrs Greenthumb.

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Gardenstew wrote on Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:50 am:

I loved this Mrs Greenthumb, so many great tips. Which is your preferred spray, the bleach or the soap variety?

As my brother always says:
"Remember, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place."

zuzu's petals wrote on Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:17 pm:

Great tips, Mrs GT!!
Really helpful, looking forward to more.

muddybob wrote on Thu Feb 15, 2007 3:21 pm:

Anne Lovejoy had a method I used on a huge dandelion. To pull it would have disturbed the other plants around it so I took a teaspoon of dry fertilizer and placed it on the crown. It may need more than one application especially if it rains. But it did work.

muddy