How to Grow a Sustainable Garden:
Weed Control and Weeding

After feeding and watering, weed control is the most important element in creating a successful garden. Weeds are plants out of place and should be eliminated. Herbicides should not and need not be used for weed control. The secret to a weed-free garden is to sprout the surface weed seeds and kill them as soon as they appear, ideally before they are 1/2 inch tall.

All it takes is a rake and a hoe and some gentle persistence (doing it regularly, weeding early and often):

Use a garden rake to pull down the ridges of the soil bed and re-build them again. This will kill the weeds on the sides.

Use a 2-way (scuffle) hoe to kill the weeds in the center of the bed between the two rows of plants and in the aisles.

In this way, a 30 foot bed can be thoroughly weeded in less than 5 minutes.

Weed Control Questions and Answers

Q.	How do you keep weeds in soil beds under control all season long with close planting?
A.	We get almost all weeds when they first emerge, with a rake and two-way hoe. And we do it two or three times if necessary, so the beds are clean. After this, because the plants are close together, they shade the ground completely, and even hardy weeds can't grow in complete shade. Therefore, later in the season when plants are large, weeds are not a problem. The aisles may also need weeding, but if they are treated the same as the beds, with weeds eliminated as soon as they emerge, very quickly the aisles will be clear also. And since no water (or food!) is applied to the aisles the weeds will grow slowly, if at all. On the other hand, traditional gardening methods plant farther apart ... thus leaving ample sunlight for weeds to prosper. And the problem is made much worse if watering is done by sprinkling or flooding! Both methods water the aisles, and flood irrigating most often also deposits new weed seeds everywhere, to grow in the newly watered soil.
Q.	What about close-planted plants that spread all over the place? Winter squash and pumpkins especially will overgrow an entire planting area. Do you just let the weeds go?
A.	We plant wide-spreading plants such as winter squash and pumpkins between 14" and 21" apart on one side of a bed, and we leave the adjacent bed vacant, so the plants have 10 feet to run. This gives spacing similar to traditional methods, but greatly minimizes weeding, watering, and feeding.
Q.	How do you get those stubborn perennial weeds such as Morning Glory and White Top completely out of your garden? Their roots can reach down several feet!
A.	I recommend you do the best job you can, with the tools you have, to eliminate all the roots and runners before measuring, staking, and building your soil beds. Thereafter, keeping your aisles dry, and regular weeding with the 2-way hoe as soon as weeds show their heads, will keep them in check, and eventually kill them off completely. Complete weeding of the beds, even to the extent of tearing down the ridges and building them up again, is often necessary to get the upper hand on perennial weeds. Don't hesitate to do this - even two or three times if necessary. It's surprisingly fast, and if you use the hoe to tear them down and the rake to put them back, you can do a 30' bed in little more than 5 minutes. Remember, this is when the weeds are tiny! If you wait a couple of weeks, it might take many times longer, and be less effective.

And finally, remember that by starting with healthy, strong seedlings, and planting your plants close together in the beds, your vegetables have a huge head start on the weeds, and they will produce total shade in the bed very quickly, so the weeds will have no sunlight by which they can grow.

We'll discuss watering next week. See you then!

Jim Kennard


Jim Kennard is President of the Food For Everyone Foundation, a non-profit organization with the mission of "Teaching the world to grow food one family at a time". You'll find many free vegetable gardening resources, including a gardening ebook, greenhouse plans, automated watering plans, and a free chapter from each of the great gardening books and software CD's Jim offers, at the website: www.foodforeveryone.org

Recommended Additional Reading:
Sustainable Gardening - An Overview
(also by Jim Kennard)