To get a rich harvest, it is necessary to properly take care of cultural plantings, including regularly cleaning the soil from weeds. There are many methods of combating unwanted vegetation, each of them has its own pros, cons and varying degrees of effectiveness.
Chemical methods
The use of pesticides to destroy weeds will provide a good result, but this method requires caution for obvious reasons. Herbicides are justified to use when other methods take a lot of time and effort, for example, on crops of a large area.
There are drugs of continuous action, harmful to any plants, and selective, which destroy only certain of their species. You can find them in a specialty store in the UK.
When using herbicides, carefully observe the dosage and safety precautions: you need to work with gloves, a respirator and protective glasses.
Mechanical methods
- Digging
Arm yourself with tools and dig up the site, removing all the rhizomes from the ground. The method is labor-intensive, but effective against perennial herbs. Experienced gardeners are advised to use a pitchfork instead of a shovel, so as not to damage the roots and not provoke a new invasion of weeds.
- Freezing
The method is similar to the previous one, only this time we dig up and clean the land at the end of autumn after harvesting from the vegetable garden. Nature will do the rest for you: with the onset of frost, the remains of rhizomes and most of the seeds will die.
- Weeding
Manual weeding is still one of the most effective methods of getting rid of weeds, but regularity is important to achieve results.
Biological methods
Mulching is covering the soil around crops with various materials. This method has a number of advantages:
- reducing the number of pest plants;
- protection of the earth from overheating, hypothermia and drying out;
- improvement of internal microflora, for example, increased activity of earthworms;
- decorating function.
Hay, straw, sawdust and wood chips, fallen leaves, needles, film, pebbles, crushed stone, cardboard are used as mulch.
It will not work to destroy all the weeds on the site once and for all. There is also no universal way that will give an absolute result. But by applying these methods patiently and comprehensively, you can significantly reduce the amount of unwanted vegetation in your garden.
