I have a great giveaway for you. Dupont has supplied me a roll of biodegradable weed control fabric to try out (review below) and an additional roll to pass on to one of you! Very cool right? — and to make it even better — there is a $100 gift card for Lowe’s Home Improvement Store tucked inside.
Here is what you have to do to win:
Tell us, in the comments, about your best weed control tip. That’s it. The Dupont people will pick the ten best tips and publish them (with credit to you and your website if you have one) on their website and I will randomly choose a comment winner from the list and send one person the fabric and the gift card.
So to summarize, Biodegradable Landscape Fabric and Cash for Lowe’s for one person, Published tips on Dupont’s website for 10 people, and weed control tips for everyone — so many ways to win!!
You have until Next Friday to leave your comment. (I will announce the winner next Saturday May 14th)
Here is my (so far) review of the landscape fabric:
From the Dupont Website :
Garden O.N.E.® stands for Organic, Natural and Environmental. This 100% biodegradable weed fabric, made from wood fiber, is designed to provide season-long weed control without chemicals. Our soft, drapable fabric is an easy way too keep weeds out and keep your “green” efforts going. Like all DuPont™ Landscape Fabric, it allows air, moisture and nutrients to pass through to your plants. And because it’s an all-natural product, it can be used in an organic garden and can even be tilled back into the soil at the end of the season. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
- Designed for annual and vegetable gardens
- 100% biodegradable
- Soft & drapable fabric
- Perfect for organic gardens
- Season-long weed control
- Till back into the soil at the end of the season
- Available size(s): 35″ X 20′
From Me : Weed control is a marathon, not a sprint — so I can’t report how it worked for the duration yet, but so far it seems like a good product. I used mine up quickly last weekend (the roll didn’t go far in my huge vegetable garden) as we laid underneath a thick layer of fresh woodchips. This area of the garden will be planted next year, so this year I am building soil and killing weeds. It went down well and you can tell from touching it that it is a wood based product — it doesn’t have any petrol or synthetic feel – so it felt like a good to use where I will be planting food. I’m not sure what else I can say about it — fingers crossed it does it’s job — I will let you know.
What a great giveaway!
My best weeding trick is not glamorous, but it’s easy. Get them when you see them. The longer you put it off, the more they will propagate.
Newspapers! Putting down a few layers of newspapers works all the time.
Timing is everything! In New England spray or remove the weeds in your lawn in June and July before they set seeds. If you can identify the weeds you are trying to remove and understand their lifecycle you can develop an effective strategy for removal.
You know, I could see this marketed to people that plant plugs too. I have 500 plugs arriving this month that I need to put in the ground. We have crazy wind, so straw will blow away, and I’ve shied away from doing traditional weed fabric because the small plants will eventually grow in more densely.
Great giveaway!
I have a large yard ( about and acre) and my best weed control tip is to chose one weed to pull up each weeding day, and then limit the number of lawn bags to do in a day. Pulling out all of one type of weed, rather than simply weedeing a section of the yard at a time ensures that that weed wont come back (until next season when it blows in from a neighboring yard) while weeding just an area can quickly get refilled with those same weed. So we pull one type of weed per day, and when we get all the weeds out of an area near a border we put down weed barrier fabric and cover it in mulch. Its worked great so far and I attribute this to our winning the war on poison ivy, bamboo and privet hedge!
Boiling Water. After making tea in the mornings I just carry the kettle outside and use the extra water to kill any weeds growing in cracks and crevices. Just make sure not to get it on any plants you want to keep. Easy and eco-friendly way to spot kill weeds.
Like Chuck, I use layers of newspapars and at works really well for me.
To date, my favorite weed prevention technique is a combination of sweat, newspaper, cardboard and mulch:
1) Annihilate your current weeds, and get any new plants properly planted. We have a nasty strain of greenbriar where I live, which can only be killed by digging up its tuber.
2) Layer newspaper anywhere you want to block weeds. Top with a layer of cardboard, then mulch. The newspaper and cardboard combo meld together, creating a thick but permeable barrier. This barrier is very difficult to cut through, so keep this in mind if you plan on adding plants at a later date. While it’s not required, I also like to stick to plain (not heavily printed) cardboard, if you can find it. Bicycle shops, appliance stores, etc. are good sources.
What a great giveaway!!! Thanks!
Sadly the weeds are winning in my yard, our yard is surrounded by weed filled pastures so even when I give it my best effort it’s a struggle. I have done a few things to make it easier:
~Mulch heavily, the weeds will still grow but the loose medium makes them easier to pull.
~Keep beds planted so they have less room to take over, I’m hoping the ground covers and yarrow will take off this year.
~Pull them before they go to seed!
~Make a game out of it with the kids–whoever pulls the most weeds in a set amount of time gets to choose what’s for dessert 🙂
I use newspapers to smother everything in a large area and as underlayment in paths, boiling water to kill things I can’t pull easily, and black plastic bags in the sun (for at least a month) to make absolutely sure things are dead before I add them to the compost heap.
Smother them in anyway possible. I like to use newspaper and old cardboard covered in woodchips, but I only have those materials in limited quantities and use them in the front garden beds, For the vegetable beds I plant intensively so no weeds can germinate, and I always go out to pull after watering or rain. Luckily for perennial beds, an established perennial bed has extensive roots that choke out any competing weeds, even on the mulched border along the grass, but when weeds do take hold, and even when the grass starts to creep in, the best way to eradicate them all is to dig them out by the roots.
This new DuPont product certainly looks great! Out of all the weeds I know how to overcome, the only one I just can’t manage is bermuda grass. All the smothering in the world can’t stop it, because I always run out of cardboard or newspaper. I have plenty of faith in this product now though. I really want to just go out and buy some to cover all of our bermuda grass with. My mom used to cover her bermuda grass with black plastic, but that just breaks down into little shreds in the soil and does nothing to stop the bermuda grass from moving in. Now I feel like this will finally work and I can just buy more to reapply every year underneath a layer of mulch.
Newspaper definitely works the best for me! tracietrump@yahoo.com
Well I don’t really have any great weed control tips. I’ve only lived in my home one summer so far. But at the beginning of that summer I pulled out 2 big dried up weeds that grew in the previous summer and while doing that a million tiny black shiny things fell to the ground. I assumed they were seeds. After putting the weeds in the trash I boiled a bunch of water and poured it on the ground where all the little seeds had fallen. That summer the weeds did not return, save for a few dandelions far from where I treated the ground. So long story short, it seemed to do the job, and best of all there were no chemicals in the ground because of it.
On another note, PICK ME! I am redoing said yard finally and sure could use some weed control in our garden and some mulah for everything else. If you’d like to take a look we are sharing every back breaking step on my blog theambitiousprocrastinator.blogspot.com.
-Nikki
No headline making story here… weeding by hand seems to be the best for me. Although chemical sprays are an easy and quick solution, I am just too aware of how bad the chemicals are for all of us. So, old fashioned mulch and weeding by hand does the trick!
Tip #1: Here in Southern Indiana, the land always wants to revert to forest, which means that baby trees are constantly springing up in my flower beds. By June are usually too well-rooted to pull out without digging. Instead, I use a pair of canvas pliers, which are special hammer-head shaped pliers that painters (like me) use to pull canvas taut over stretchers. Tip #2: Wear an evening gown and serve cocktails to lure unsuspecting neighbors over to your front yard, where the dandelions are inevitably the thickest. Even if your guests don’t actually pitch in, they’ll entertain you while you get the job done.
I live next to an empty lot so weeds are a never-ending battle in our yard. We put down some weed fabric and mulch last year as an experiment and it seems to do well with most weeds. When the weeds do pop up, they are easy to pull because their roots have nowhere to go. I could use some more of that fabric to finish the rest of our landscaping!
The best one I know is to pull them as soon as you see them. Landscape fabric does help but is not the total answer. VIgilance is the answer!
My answer – and what gardener WOULDN’T love this – plant more plants! Established plants, particularly perennials and shrubs, shade out the soil beneath them. In a mature garden, this can completely negate the need to weed after about mid-June. What gardener wouldn’t want an excuse to go buy and plant new plants – the thicker the better for weed control!
I’m intrigued! Pouring boiling water on weeds is the way my mother taught me, but I’m not sure how effective it is anymore!
Best weed control tip with added multiple benefits ; “Mulch”.
A thick layer of organic aged decomposing mulch will suppress weed growth and provide beneficial nutrients to the soil as it breaks down. It can mediate the temperature of the soil by providing added warmth in the winter ( great for those who are growing subtropicals in cooler climates) and it help keep the soil cooler and retain moisture in heat of summer.
Mulch aids in evapotranspiration in the soil and in the plant – a very important aspect for those of us in the West who have to calculate evapotranspiration rates in our irrigation schematics.
And last but not least, mulch provides a habitat for essential bugs and microbes who help in creating a healthy living soil.
The use of a bio-degradable weed fabric is an incredibly progressive step that ensures the ongoing health and vigor of a natural soil web.
I wrote a note to my 5 children one morning last week:
“Children, for the next two days you can make some money: I will pay you 1 cent for every dandelion stem and blossom you pull off. Put them in a bag so we can throw them in the trash; keep count of how many you pick, and help your 4 year old brother count his.”
My wife said when I got home, ” Man, you’ve got an expensive weed control program!”
The winner after the two days was our 6 yr old daughter who made $10.06.
my best advice is to learn to identify weeds and be proactive about removing them. I just need to follow my own advice. 🙂
Pine Needles! When our Evergreen trees drop their needles, I leave them. Weeds are less likely to grow & when they do, they are really easy to pull. Now if only our whole yard was an Evergreen Forest!
Starting out – For agressive, unwanted plants, several deluges in boiling water works beautifully. For large areas, newspapers and mulch or compost: Clear the ground, weedwack or clip unwanted plants at close to soil surface as possible without disturbing soil if possible, put down several layers of newspaper, water, press paper layers in contact with soil – gently or paper will tear, repeat at least twice more, finally put down several inches of mulch or compost. If you have a large area, many tree trimming companies will deliver freshly chipped trees at no cost. Once things are under control stay on top of weeding, it is not a big chore if maintained regularly.
Weeding after a rain is ideal, but if I am going to weed an area and it hasn’t rained recently, I will water the area the night before so the roots come out. I also try to plant my perennials as tightly as possible to minimize places for weeds to grow.
We turn most of our weeds into eggs. We use the sheet mulch method of overlapping at least ten layers of newspaper or a layer of cardboard and then wetting it down. Our edible beds are built lasagna garden style on the top of the sheet mulch. The beds are mulched with straw and fallen leaves, wood chips or more straw are used as mulch in between the beds. That way any weed that dares peek through is super easy to pull by hand. The weeds that grow in our chemical free yard are a treat for our backyard chickens and before you know it they pay it forward with an edible gift.
For the areas where we have desert landscaping in the form of granite gravel, we have prevented weeds by putting a layer of black plastic sheeting under the gravel.
Neighborhood kids.. I try to hire the ones who are too young to get a real job.. with the permission of their parents I pay them approx $5/hr for yard work like pulling weeds or moving soil..etc..
The kids win b/c they get money.. The kids parents win b/c the kids start to develop the value of work = money.. and I win.. b/c I don’t hear my wife yell at me about how the weeks are everywhere. 🙂