Welcome new gardeners

 

Please be aware that the South Zone Community Garden, like all gardens, has weeds. It is your responsibility to control weeds within your garden plot and, for those of you located besides a crossing path (every 3rd garden), for keeping the weeds down within those paths.

 

The plots are surrounded mostly by brome grass but quackgrass has established in some areas over the years. Both grasses have rhizomes which means they spread underground. Rhizomes left in the garden in the fall will then be cultivated in and spread around, worsening the problem in the following and future years for you and your neighbours.

 

There are several ways of keeping the weeds down which are described below. If you desire more information, please register for the Organic Gardening class on April 15, 2008 by contacting Sunrise Library.  Mention the class, date and personal information.

 

Weed Control

­Timing is everything.

-          Smaller weeds are easier to get rid of

-          Never let your weeds go to seed

­Hot water works

­A little salt will do the trick ( It’s not a good idea to add too much salt in a garden though)

­Sprout them out

­Crowd them out

­When in doubt, mulch

­Action must follow planning

 

Invaders:

­Don’t plant any in your garden

­If you do, keep them dead-headed, and the perennials in one spot

­Know Your Weeds and choose the proper control method

­Looser soil means easier weeding

 

Weed Control Methods 1

­Minimize Imports

–Clean tools and shoes

–Don’t throw flowering weeds in compost

–Pick seeds with lowest % weed seeds

­Don’t disturb soil unnecessarily

­Don’t till areas infested with perennial weeds, dig them up

­Encourage healthy competition

­Anti-weed Watering (ilel only water your plants rather than the whole soil)

 

 

Weed Control Methods 2

­Organically herbicide them

–Corn gluten

­Cook them out

–Solarize

–Propane weeder

–Infrared weeder

­Choke them

–Green manure

­Cut of their heads

–Before they go to seed with mower or string trimmer

­Mow them down

–Before they go to seed

­Pull them out

­Dig them out

–Follow the roots to China if you have to!

­Graze or eat them

 

Weed Control Tools

­Weed Barriers (cloth)

­Sweep and Vac (throw away if there are seeds)

­Cultivators

­Hoes

­Japanese Weeding Knife (Maria Rodale)

­Dandelion Digger

­Water-Powered Weeder

­Garden Fork

­U-Bar Digger

­String trimmers

­Lawn mowers

­Rototillers

­Herbicidal Soap

­Propane Weeders

­Eco-Weeder – Infrared

­Grazers

 

Dirt pathways can be cultivated, mulched with leaves or grass clippings, or a landscape fabric covered for protection applied for the growing season and removed before cultivation in fall.

 

Persistent weeds. Two that have taken over in the last few years are Common Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) and Wild Lettuce (Lactuca scariola). Google images and their scientific names for illustrations. Both have yellow flowers, somewhat like a dandelion flower, but many per stems. The wild lettuce has prickly stems and many mistake it for sow thistle. It also has a long taproot which may survive the winter. They start producing flowers and seeds when fairly small, and produce seeds very quickly. Cutting them does NOT work. They have to be dug out or you WILL come back to a very weedy garden after less than 2 weeks! Both also have the annoying habit of easily re-rooting, even in only a small rootlet encounters moist soil before they are totally dessicated.

 

I usually pull my weeds rather than cultivate them, and I pile them up as mulch. I just have to remember to turn the piles over a few times until dry to prevent re-rooting of those two species.

 

Keeping Grass out of gardens

-    Every spring, I edge my garden and dig a ditch, which is then easy to keep clean through the season. This works because every fall, before cultivation, I also ensure that no grass rhizomes extend into the garden. If you grow potatoes, make sure the grass rhizomes are not left on the garden because they host wireworms.

-    Paul rototills a 20-30 cm wide area around his garden every 2 - 3 weeks throughout the summer. Forking and pulling rhizomes would also work.

-    While digging out grass takes time, a good job has long-term benefits and significantly decreases work in the long term.

-   Other gardeners have been successful killing the grass by covering it with dark plastic over the summer.

-   Others use RoundUp around their plot. Much care has to be taken because some adjoining gardens have been decimated from RoundUp applications in the past. Also, while RoundUp adsorbs (or clings to) to the soil, with enough moisture, it also desorbs and moves around to come up where not necessarily wanted. It also affects the balance of nutrients in plants, and several crops seeded after RoundUp use have a much higher incidence of disease.

 

Paule Hjertaas