<p>How do you keep weeds from growing in your flower beds? </p>
<p>I am sick, sick, sick of pulling weeds every weekend during the summer in order to keep the flower beds looking nice. Is there some kind of tarp I can lay under the dirt, with holes cut for my flowers? </p>
<p>I’m going to be adding a new bed area (where I used to have grass) this year and really don’t want to deal with weeds too much. </p>
<p>What do you recommend?</p>
<p>Weedcloth is readily available at any gardening store. It is semi-porous, lets rain through, but weeds don’t grow from underneath it. I’ve bought weedcloth at Home Depot too.</p>
<p>To get rid of weed seeds in your new area, prepare the soil, then cover it with clear plastic for a few weeks to heat up and sterilize the soil. Alternatively, let the weeds sprout and then turn the soil over again a few times.</p>
<p>I use a 4" layer of compost on my garden twice a year and weeds are easy to deal with. It takes me about an hour once a week to hoe my garden (which is quite large) (about 10 minutes for a 10’x30’ bed) (I don’t have a lawn, so I equate this with lawn-mowing time). (And yes, I just used way too many parentheses.)</p>
<p>I’d go easy on the weed barriers, over time they are often as much work as weeding (popping up, caught on a rake, roots growing through the cracks and then when you pull the weed the cloth comes up with the roots). Around trees or shrubs it’s not bad, in garden beds or flower beds, I’d use caution.</p>
<p>As to killing exiting weeds to create a bed, if you’re adding new soil, first lay down a layer of newspaper and wet it down. Then cover it with the topsoil. In a week to 10 days, the weeds/grass will have died and the paper will have deteriorated. Then you can plant to your hearts content. Ive been doing it for years with great success: always works.</p>
<p>I agree with dmd77, use as much mulch as you have, or can afford. Anything over three inches will do a fantastic job of keeping out weeds.</p>
<p>Good luck with the green thumb!</p>
<p>Yes, I should have mentioned that I only use weedcloth in areas where I don’t expect to disturb the plants, like with shrubs and trees. Not with perennials. With vegetables it works because you’re going to pull it up at the end of the season anyway. </p>
<p>If you’re going to use newspaper, check to make sure the newspaper is printed with soy inks. Most of them are, these days, but…</p>
<p>Ok, let me make sure I understand. </p>
<p>It sounds like the weedcloth isn’t a good idea because I am planting perennials.</p>
<p>So, I should lay down newspaper, wet the newspaper, cover the wet newspaper with topsoil and wait a week. Then, I should cover the topsoil with lots of mulch and plant my flowers and shrubs. </p>
<p>What I have in my existing flowerbeds now is that thick grassy looking stiff that’s wet on the inside - yuck (onion grass?). It grew up during the past 6 weeks - despite the cedar mulch I have down from last year. I’ve been using the large mulch chips. Maybe I should switch to the more shredded version.</p>
<p>Momsdream,</p>
<p>Yes to everything you said.</p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>Momsdream- I use newspaper directly under my mulch and it works very well, but that’s in beds that are already established. After your perennials are established, it also helps to use Preen every six weeks or so (Pre-emergent herbicide). It works predominately on grasses, not dandelions, so may be helpful in combatting any potential on-going weed problems. Good luck!</p>
<p>Momsdream, try corn gluten meal, sold here under brand name Concern. It comes in a big bag from the garden store and you shake it over your garden out of holes in the bottom. This only works if you are transplanting, because it prevents seeds from germinating…hence fewer weeds. Totally organic, too, and will not burn plants. Safe for animals. Then I cover with a deep layer of beautiful composted manure that I have delivered from my local greenhouse.</p>
<p>In my big vegetable garden I use a mantis hand tiller.</p>
<p>Happy spring!!</p>
<p>ez</p>
<p>I recommend learning to enjoy weeding.</p>
<p>Speaking as a perennial gardener, I recommend the prepare and use clear plastic method over the newspaper method; I don’t like newspaper because it never quite goes completely away and it’s ugly. And cedar chips, in my experience, are worse than useless; they don’t decay, they don’t prevent weeds, they’re expensive, they don’t add anything to the soil. And Preen is not exactly good for perennials, IMHO (I think Preen may work better in locations other than the places I’ve tried).</p>
<p>I can’t remember where you’re located, but I’ve gardened in four different places (CA, HI, MA, and WA) and my answer on avoiding weeding varies with the place. In HI, lots of people use flamethrowers for weeding, just burn those things out; in CA (bay area, not SF), drip irrigation that’s focussed only on the plants means that weeds are small and easy to pull; in MA, once a week hoeing took care of the problem quickly; in WA, 4 inches of compost and a quick hoeing works wonders.</p>
<p>Do you use a hoe? There are numerous different models, and some do a better job than others. </p>
<p>I should make it clear, as well, that I garden pretty much organically, since I grow a lot of herbs and vegetables mixed in with my flowers, fruit trees, and shrubs. I try to avoid chemicals partly because I don’t want to eat them, but also because I don’t want to breathe them when I spray or put them down–and I don’t want them in my local water table, either. I try not to use plants that are finicky enough to require fungicide or pesticides. I do use Roundup (glyphosate) from time to time; it decomposes rapidly–but I only use it when I need to kill everything in an area (blackberries and nettle, usually).</p>
<p>Dmd, yes, I do use a hoe. It’s just a hassle. I like to work on the garden less and enjoy it with a margarita in hand more. We live in PA.</p>
<p>Yo uare right about the cedar chips…and now I have to either go clean them up and throw them away OR clear weeds around them, which is a huge hassle.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I grew up in eastern PA, which is where I learned to handweed for my mother.</p>
<p>Well, if it were me, I’d clean out the bed, let it sprout once, then turn it and clear plastic it for at least six weeks (until you get that sticky hot weather in June). Then, lots of compost mulch and put the plants in with a drip watering system for only them. The nice thing about the compost is that it’s easy to hoe–no rocks and very fluffy.</p>
<p>Tired of weeds, I went to container planting and handwatering combined with a drip system. I partially buried my pots so that they don’t look too obvious. I was even able to inbed them among shrubs and bushes. This makes it easier for me to pull the little weedlings (that’s baby weeds) when they pop up without pulling out my annual/perennials plants.</p>
<p>Hurray! We can finally talk about something besides college.</p>
<p>I live in Eastern PA also and I love the corn gluten meal which you can order from Gardens Alive. I buy it from Hilltop, near Media PA. It’s a little late to spread now. It’s supposed to go down when the forsythia blooms, which started two weeks ago, south of Philly. You can still try it, though and catch the late germinating weeds. It’s also a great high nitrogen fertilizer but it will keep all seeds from germinating, so you can’t use it if you’re planting grass seed, for example.</p>
<p>I also garden mostly organically but used some Round Up for bind weed last fall. Now I hear from You Bet Your Garden that it kills amphibians. Yikes! What to do now? I’m using black plastic and trying to fry the patch of bind weed. So we’ll see how it goes.</p>
<p>The Roundup in the study on amphibians was applied directly to the pond. </p>
<p>From this source: <a href=“http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00562.html[/url]”>http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00562.html</a> </p>
<p>“Organic phosphorus (Roundup, Touchdown, Ignite). These herbicides exhibit high acidity, very high water solubility and very low volatility. They readily react with clay and metal oxides in soils to form insoluble iron, aluminum and calcium precipitates. As a result, they have very high soil retention. Soil mobility is very low. Persistence is very short due to the formation of insoluble precipitates, making them biologically inactive upon contact with mineral soils.”</p>
<p>So, it would appear that Roundup applied directly to soil is relatively safe, if used infrequently and in small amounts on plants and not into water.</p>
<p>You east PA people: do you go to Longwood Gardens? My favorite gardens!</p>
<p>Dmd, thanks so much for the info on Roundup (and similar products). Where we llive, weeds are tenacious (as I suppose they are everywhere, almost by definition). Most neighbors routinely spray borders and beds with Roundup (about 2/3 of our neighbors have lawn services that use these products). I have avoided using sich sprays because of concerns, but your information gives me a sense of relief. </p>
<p>Look out weeds. I have a spray bottle and know how to use it!!!</p>
<p>Thanks, again;)</p>
<p>momsdream, There is a product that stops weeds from germinating. The original product went by the brand name Pre-emergent (I think). Home depot has another brand that also includes a fertilizer for your established plants. I applied this product last weekend Ill let you know how it works.</p>
<p>Thank you all for these wonderful suggestions. Am I right to assume that none of these products will harm my flowers and shrubs? </p>
<p>dmd77, yes, we get out to Longwood, usually once in the summer and once in the winter, when their Christmas displays are up. The Christmas visit has been a tradition in my family since I was a teen. </p>
<p>More often, we go to Morris Arboretum (UPenn’s arboretum), which is 10 minutes from my home. D and I went last Sunday and were disappointed that most everything was in the “prep” stages…not much to see. If you’re ever in this area, do get to Morris. It’s an incredible place.</p>
<p>LOL, momsdream, I will think of you now whenever I pull weeds in my garden, as I happened to do this morning! My rock garden is now jam packed with roses, lavender, digitalis and bedding plants underneath and I think that together they have choked out the weeds. And anyway, I kind of like pulling out those long tap roots…(“take THAT, you suckers!”)…talking about plants always makes me feel bittersweet as it makes me miss my mom…</p>
<p>Patient, sounds like a lovely rock garden. I can’t wait to actually get things growing in mine. The beds have all been weeded and the new bed has been dug and shaped (it has a curved edge, which wasn’t easy to plan out).</p>
<p>My biggest challenge is to do this on a budget. I don’t have money to blow on flowers and shrubs…or mulch and topsoil. </p>
<p>My neighbor is moving and broke of a piece of her corkscrew willow for me. She told me that it will grow roots if I leave it in a bucket of water - then I can plant it. I don’t know if it’s true and I can’t find anything on the topic of getting trees to root from cut branches. It’s been in the bucket for a week. If anyone has advice on this tree, please share.</p>