You get and in garden out the yard, the dont you a can openly your fantasy with from neighbours door your Its embarrassing walk a or centre purchase implements. doesnt the if talk gardening. I go on. Gardening can one the rewarding of Creating beautiful where there nothing. people they like they talking the of and out patch watching plants and but about arduous such weeding I am here to offer all you non believers (that is gardening haters) a path to the gardening heaven. Weeding Even I hate weeding, and I have been a passionate gardener since I was in my teens. So how do you cut down the task of weeding? Here is how I do it. All my perennial garden beds have weedmat laid on them. If you havent come across weedmat before, you are in for a sweet surprise. It cuts your weeding by 95%, and the weeds that do manage to root in the weed mat pull out so easy that a preschooler could do it. Now dont confuse weedmat with that horrible old black plastic that use to be laid on garden beds back in the 70s. That black plastic did horrible and unspeakable things to the soil, making the ground pretty much unusable and rock like. Weed mat allows the soil to breath, water to penetrate and fertilisers that are applied over weedmat also permeate through it to the plant roots. Weedmat will stop not only couch grass, but oxalis and nutgrass. True. I laid it directly over a rose bed that was badly infested with all bar the nut grass over three years ago, and apart from the odd part growing out the edge of the weed mat, my rose bed has been weed free. There are a couple of different types of weedmat and all have their merits. Jute weed mat is great if you can get hold of it. It allows a litte bit more weed penetration than the following two, but is great for the environment, and also acts as a mulch, retaining water. Woven weedmat is probably the most heavy duty out of them all. It is fine strips of plastic that are woven into a cloth. This was the weedmat that defeated my oxalis and couch grass. Enviro weedmat is also quite good. It sort of looks like that iron on interface that you get on clothes, but it is black. It breaks down after about 4 or 5 years. Its only downfall is that sharp stick and rocks will tear it quite easily. Mulch is also a good way to cut down weeds. I have it over every bed in my garden, even the ones that have weedmat on them, more for aesthetics on than weed suppression over the weedmat. There are a multitude of mulches available, from organic straws, barkchips, composted materials to inorganic stones and gravels. All have their advantages and downfalls, which is an article in itself. Another rule for eliminating weeds is to get them before they seed. One plant can send out thousands of seeds, which is potentially thousands of weeds if you dont get rid of them before they flower and set seed. Mowing The only thing I can really offer here is get a low creeping grass such as Santa Ana couch. Pave where the lawn is or find someone else to do the mowing. Alright, so maybe I have only taken you to gardening paradise, not gardening heaven. But hopefully I have helped you see the light. Jody has been in the horticultural industry in Victoria for close to ten years. She ran her first nursery at 25 while studying horticulture through the University of Melbourne. From there she moved on to work in three diverse nurseries in Melbourne and the country, two of which she managed. Jody also wrote a weekly gardening column for The Weekly Advertiser for five years while running a small local nursery in Horsham. Currently Jody is teaching horticulture at the University of Ballarat, Horsham campus and is the resident Horticulturalist on ABC Western Victoria's Monday gardening program. |