Keep Your Vegetable Garden Weed-Free with These Easy Tips

Get rid of weeds in garden! Weeds happen in every garden—but they don’t have to take over! In this video, I’m sharing my personal approach to keeping weeds in check: hoeing to quickly cut them down, careful hand pulling near delicate plants, and smart composting of pulled weeds and animal bedding.
composting fully and partially decomposed weeds can improve your soil and reduce future weeds
Weekly Vlog: Managing Weeds in the Vegetable Garden | Hoeing, Hand Pulling & Composting Tips

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#weeds #gardeningtips #vegetablegarden #composting #homesteading #weedmanagement

Hey everyone, welcome back to the garden. This week I want to talk about something every gardener faces. Weeds pop up everywhere and if we’re not careful, they can take over the garden competing with sunlight, nutrients, water. Today I thought I might share with you a couple things that I do to try to maintain the weeds in my garden. I’m not out here weeding daily, but I do spend bits of time most days, even if it’s just 15 minutes. My first strategy is to plant as soon as possible after the soil is prepared because the weed seeds as soon as that soil is prepared, they are getting cozy and comfortable and soaking up any moisture in the soil and getting ready to germinate. We don’t want the weeds to get a head start on us. Second strategy is to interplant fast growing vegetables like radishes along the pathway so you can tell where your rows are compared to where your walkways are. It makes life super easy for keeping those paths clear before everything starts to grow. Strategy number three is to hoe around the plants as soon as you can. Once they pop up, like the larger plants like green beans, it’s easy to to hoe around them and you won’t hurt them. But when you’re waiting for things to grow, if the soil hasn’t warmed up enough or if they just take longer to germinate, don’t ho those areas until they have come up and you can distinguish them from the weeds around them, till they get their first set of true leaves. You can tell in these rows I have not hoed. There’s a little bit of weed growth in between the rows of radishes. Zucchinis need to pop up out of there, and the soil’s just been a little bit cool, so I’m waiting for them to hop up out of the soil before I weed anything. Once the zucchini has popped up, I am weeding around it, getting rid of the weeds. The younger and smaller they are, the easier it is. Find tools that work for you. This is called a push hole. It cuts the plants off right at the surface level when you push it back and forth, and it works really well, and it gets into the tight little spaces. So, it’s really nice in between rows. I also have other tools that I use for larger spaces. I would highly recommend getting one of these, a regular hoe, and a rake. How you choose to water your plants also affects weed growth. I like to use soaker hoses because it gets less water all over the garden. The water will just water right at the base of the plant instead of watering everything like a sprinkler would. The sprinkler is easier in that you just turn it on and it waters the whole place, but it’s a lot harder for weed management because the places that you don’t water do not grow as well. So, you don’t have as much weeds to take out of where you’re not growing like in the paths and stuff. So, I like to get rid of all the weeds around a plant before I water it. Just like right up close to it. I don’t like to put the hoe too close and accidentally like just the fear of accidentally chopping off my little friend here’s noggin there. It’s ready to ready to go all the way down. For some of the smaller seedated herbs and vegetables that take a while before they germinate, like celery, oregano, thyme, I find it much easier to start them inside or outside in their own container and then transplant them out later. That way, the weeds aren’t taking over the garden bed before your seeds have even had a chance to come up yet. Another tip is to plant densely in a raised bed. Make sure you get out all of the plants you don’t want before you start and then plant them pretty close together. They will fill in and there will be very little weeding to do. For borders along fences or persistent weed areas that you want to smother out like briars, I love using cardboard. Just put it in place and put on top of it some compostable material such as straw, shavings, old weeds, whatever you have to keep it in place. This will last the entire season. For small seated things like salad greens, green onions, bok choy, spinach, I am loving the green stocks. They are so easy to care for and there’s almost no weeds in them at all. I find growing in containers in general just easier to weed. Every time you water them or harvest, just pull any weeds that are in there with them and you’re good to go. When pulling weeds by hand, get the roots out. Put your fingers down at the base of the weed and pull it up and make sure you get the roots out so it doesn’t regrow. Pulling the weeds by hand is the most labor intensive. It takes the most time, but it’s definitely worth it because once your plants start to get a certain size, my friend zucchini here, I’m going to come and pull these little guys out, but pretty soon it’ll be shading this a lot more and there’s not going to be as much weed growth down here. Now, at a certain time in the garden, there’s going to be so much harvesting that has to happen that I’m not going to be able to keep up. By that point, my plants will be a lot bigger and they won’t be being smothered out as much by the weeds as if I didn’t do this. Right now, I’ve been harvesting radishes for a couple weeks. And as I pull them, I pull the weeds up as well. And as you can see, I just leave them there. They’re going to decompose, feed the vegetables, and act as a covering of the soil to help smother out weed growth. Just make sure they’re not touching the plants. Now, between the walkways of the beds, if they’re wide enough, I like to use the animal bedding from our chickens and our ducks. It’s not composted, so it’s still hot. But that’s okay because I make sure there’s a nice wide space between it and the actual plants. In the winter, we just pile up all of the bedding from the coups as we clean them out right by the coupe in anticipation of summertime, hauling it into the garden. Going to take this and lay it in the pathway. Okay, so I did one pathway. It took like two and a half wheelbarls is all also cleaning out their coops. Got some green mulch areas that I’m going to go ahead and put the duck cooping on it like I did here. But it’s going to be placed in the next room. Admittedly, it looks terrible. This is what I just laid down freshly. But this is just from yesterday. And it didn’t take long for it to blend in pretty well. Out of those 14 tips that I shared, hopefully at least one of them will somehow be helpful if you’re struggling with weeds. Oh, and weeds can be super beneficial. I made a video about using your weeds to fertilize your garden, making a weed tea. I’ll go ahead and link that in the subscription box. Works fantastic. and you have a free resource growing whether you like it or not. On gardening forums that I participate in, I often see people asking what to spray on your garden. You know, what do you use? Don’t use any of that stuff. Just hoe, hand weed, compost. It’s so much healthier for the environment, for your own personal health. And if you get into a system, it’s actually not that bad. If you like gardening and chicken videos, go ahead and subscribe.