How to Keep Weeds Out of the Garden

Weeds are everywhere, including the garden. Keeping them out is an impossibility because they are already in your soil, and more seeds arrive daily via birds and animals, in the plants you buy and carried on the breeze. Mitigate weeds, however, by making your garden as inhospitable to them as possible.

Newspaper or cardboard

Mulch

Cover crop seeds

Hoe

Prepare new garden beds by layering instead of by digging. Digging and tilling the soil brings weed seeds to the surface to germinate and compete with desirable plants. Instead, lay a layer of newspaper 20 pages thick or two layers of heavy cardboard over the existing vegetation and pile organic matter on top. Put the coarsest layer, such as twigs, straw or leaves, on the bottom and top with grass clippings, vegetable, wood chips, yard debris, coffee grounds and the like -- the thicker the better. Top with four inches of fine compost mixed with topsoil. Plant shallow-rooted plants, such as vegetables, into this bed immediately or sow a cover crop such as fava beans, buckwheat, crimson clover or vetch to chop down next spring. Weeds that seed into the bed will be easy to pull when young.

Plant thickly. Traditional English perennial borders, where shrubs, perennials, grasses and annuals are planted so closely that no light reaches the ground need little weeding. Plant ornamental garden areas the same way and plant vegetable beds so that the plants are shoulder to shoulder to block weed seeds from germinating. Thin them as they mature. Ground covers planted under plants also compete with weeds and leave little bare soil for them to germinate.

Mulch beds with three or four layers of newspaper arranged around the desirable plants. Cover the paper with 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch, such as shredded bark, shredded leaves, wood chips, straw or pine needles. Renew the mulch each spring and fall. Mulch adds nutrition to the soil and conserves moisture, as well as blocking weed growth.

Pull any weed you see as soon as you see it, before it has the chance to go to seed and spread. Use a scuffle hoe, which you pull along with short, shallow strokes just under the soil, to cut off young weed seedlings in beds. Repeatedly cutting the tops off weeds prevents them from photosynthesizing, weakening them until the roots die. Don't hoe deeply or you will bring more weed seeds to the surface or damage plant roots. Weed when the soil is wet, as weeds pull easier then.