The safe way to keep your garden weed-free this summer

If you haven’t heard the news, curb appeal is pretty big right now. One of the best ways to play straight into the hands of this new phenomenon which supposedly makes you the envy of every neighbor around is via your garden.

Unfortunately, there’s just one equation that makes this difficult:

Water + Sun = Weeds

In short, weeds are something that will blight every garden in the land. It can go from a beautifully manicured masterpiece to something that mimics a jungle. All of this can happen in a matter of months, or even weeks.

To make the matter a little more complicated, it’s not just as easy as heading to the store and buying a huge tub of weed killer. Some of the biggest manufacturers of these substances have come under intense scrutiny because of the chemicals they use, with more information on the infographic listed at the bottom of the page.

It means that you need to think outside the box and fortunately, some of these steps aren’t as difficult as you might imagine.

For example, one of the easiest ways to limit the weeds in a garden is to actually do less work. Many of us have got used to tilling our gardens (cultivating and turning the soil over). While this might have benefits in some regards, all it does is bring sunlight to the roots of some of the weeds. The result? You guessed it.

Similarly, you should be looking to mulch. There are a great couple of guides on how to achieve this mentioned at the bottom of the page and if your garden is too large, you can count on some larger machinery to help you on your way. Put simply, the premise of mulching is to place wood chips, leaves and anything else that can build a thick layer. It will keep moisture locked in the ground, prevent evaporation and in short, reduce the chances of weeds occurring.

Something else we should speak about is the power of hot water. As we’ve already mentioned, there is a lot of controversy about commercial weed killers at the moment, but one of the best solutions around comes in the form of boiling water. When applied to a weed it cooks it, and that’s the end of a story. The only thing that you need to be wary of is what’s around it so if your weed is on a lawn, it goes without saying that this approach isn’t going to work very well.

Finally, let’s talk about a DIY solution. It goes by the name of solarizing and involves placing black plastic sheeting on beds that have been watered. The aim here is to prevent all sunlight from hitting the weeds (remember that equation we spoke about earlier) and in time, the weeds will die. Now, it’s important to do this either immediately before or after the season, to obtain the maximum effect. If you want to go one step further, purchase a tarp which will have a similar effect. If you are thinking about selling your house in Florida, you should make sure your garden is free of weeds and looking good.

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