Hi When I bought my house, there was an area behind our deck with overgrown weeds. I finally decided to tackle these weeds a few months ago but haven't had much luck & I'm looking for tips on the best way to tackle this. Attached are a few photos of it. It's on a slope, which can make it a little difficult to get certain kinds of machinery up there and there's some rocks hidden throughout the weeds, which makes mowing it a little iffy. I originally tried spraying Round Up, which killed off some but most remained. Then, about 2 months ago, I went in and pulled ALL weeds, one by one. It was a long, tiring process, but I was finally happy with it. All weeds were gone! Fast forward a few weeks and our son was born. Taking care of him and our other VERY active two year old, didn't leave much extra time to maintain these weeds. If you look at the attached photos, this is what's sprouted in the 5 weeks since my son was born!! So, now I'm ready to jump back in and tackle these weeds again, but I want to make sure I do it right this time, so they don't come back. What do you recommend the best approach I should take? Thanks
Hi Goalie 35, Welcome to the Stew! Wow you must have put in an incredible aount of work clearing that area out! I am from New England and can relate. I am clearing out a very very overgrown patch behind my perennial garden. It was so overgrown, it even had tree saplings growing in it! I got ahold of a good sized weed whacker and cut everything down to within an inch of its life. Then I applied flattened cardboard boxes, then mulch. How does that sound to you? Doable on that slope? BTW, I personally am leery of Roundup. Lately it is been discovered to be a carcinogen. I have used it in desperation on poison ivy I could not get rid of. But I would think of it as a last resort . Good luck with your project. The good news is that that soil must be fairly rich to grow such a good crop of weeds!! It looks like you will need to a good ground cover if you don't want to garden that area. Or maybe just keep reapplying wood chips or mulch.
Try to snip a sample of each different weed and get it identified. Some will respond to weed killer by dying and some will consider it a health food drink and keep coming back. One of the most common and prolific weeds in my area grows like crazy in areas that have been hosed down by weed killers and the soil is almost lifeless, so basically with that one if you keep your soil rich and healthy it can not grow there.
The benefit of an agent like roundup is that it kills to the roots. This can be very helpful in preventing grow back. As suggested, it will not kill everything and some folks are opposed to this kind of chemical method. If it was me, I would use/rent a weed wacker and cut down everything to abut 6" and bag it up. Then I would spray what is left of the plants with roundup. You have to go out and spray every few days targeting plants that are still green. Anything that doesn't brown you will need to pull or dig out. Leave the dead plants for two weeks to make sure that they are dead all the way to the roots. The reason I suggest leaving 6" of plant is that roundup is absorbed through the leaves and will work better if there is still some plant to work on. If you don't want to use roundup, you will have to pull everything again. It might be a good time to see if there are some neighborhood kids who will help out for a bit of summer cash. In most environments, native plants (aka weeds) will fully occupy any available habitat. Something will grow back if you don't prevent it. The plants that grow back are highly adapted to your area and will grow quickly without any help like watering or fertilizer. You have a couple of prevention options. You can buy a grazing animal like a goat to eat the weeds as they appear (just kidding). You can plant some other plant there as a ground cover to take up all the available space and resources and thus keep the weeds down. This is more or less what you lawn does. For an area like yours, vines like myrtle, https://www.amazon.com/Myrtle-48-Plants-Periwinkle-Groundcover/dp/B004B6OUSW and other vinca species would be a good choice as well as ivy. There are some fast growing re-seeding flowers like Black-Eyed Susan, Columbines, and Forget-Me-Nots that could also work depending on the amount of sunlight you get. You would still have to weed the area some, but the problem would be much reduced. The other option would be a weed barrier similar to that described by Cayuga Morning. If you go that route, I would put down landscaping fabric over the entire area and then an inch or two of mulch. If you absolutely know that you don't want to plant anything there you can spray the ground with roundup 360 before putting down the fabric. This does a good job of preventing weeds over time but is a bad idea if you are going to try to grow anything there on purpose. Personally, I think that area would make a great flower garden once you have some time to work on it. I would do the weed barrier and mulch and then as plants start to go on sale toward the end of the summer I would start to add some shrubs and perennials here and there and develop the area over time. Next summer you can plant some appropriate annuals and border plants like hosta. Over time you will only need to mulch or add ground cover between your other plantings. LMHmedchem
