Six tips to spend less time weeding

Our recent rains and warm weather have prompted the weeds in our gardens to start growing, well, like weeds! Here's how to spend less time weeding and more time enjoying your beds and borders:

l Invest in a good weeding tool.

It makes me cringe when I see people trying to weed with a knife or worse yet, one of those pronged garden forks. Those are to loosen the soil - not to remove weeds. You're simply cultivating the weeds to help them grow better.

A hoe is fine for small weeds in areas like vegetable gardens, but in flower beds and other tight spots, use an Asian plow (also called an EZ digger and other names) or Cape Cod weeder. Once you use them, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.

l Get ‘em small.

I know, easier said than done. But getting weeds small saves hours later. And never, ever let weeds go to flower or seed. You might as well go through your garden and plant them from a seed packet

l Weed when it's wet.

The best time to weed is right after a rain so you can get roots and all. If the ground is hard, take a break and give the area a good soaking. Then go back several hours later.

l Mulch, mulch, mulch.

Each spring, I order about a pickup load of shredded bark mulch from a local landscaper and then spread it 1 to 3 inches deep around everything. You'll reduce watering, prevent disease, and cut the recurrence of most weeds by about half.

l Know when to pull and when to hoe.

Hoeing is good only when weeds are less than an inch tall or wide. Pull all other weeds, using a weeder to uproot them or slice them off.

But be careful. Some weeds, such as purslane, can be spread by hoeing. When you cut and scatter tiny bits through the soil, they grow into new plants. So you're not weeding but propagating.

l Weed in the fall.

Summon what gardening energy you have left in September and October to keep up with weeding. One study showed that fall weeding reduced overall weeding the following year by 75 percent, which sort of makes sense. Late summer and early fall is when many weeds are going to seed.

l Veronica Lorson Fowler is co-publisher of The Iowa Gardener website at www.theiowagardener.com.