Weed Control for Efficient Gardening of Vegetables

A true garden aficionado must know that cultivation or weeding is required for growth control. Weeds are your garden's most persistent and cloying enemy. You need to be able to know how to handle weeds in order to foster growth in your organic garden. If you let weeds take over, they will completely obliterate your capacity to yield a rich number of vegetables.

Image via WikipediaWeeds are the number one stealer of nutrients, sunlight and revenue for farmers, so the earlier you try to eliminate them, the better will it be for your gardening. This can certainly eat up your time in certain seasons, depending on the size of your garden, but monitoring weeds and eliminating them is definitely worth your time and effort.  

Weeds are usually much harder to remove when they have matured. So your best plan of attack will be to monitor your garden closely, and eliminate them at first sight. Cultivating your soil regularly in the garden will help eliminate the younger weeds. Once you let those young weeds take hold and become firmly established in the garden, it will become a more herculean task to try to remove them. 

Seasons also affect the appearance of weeds. Warm-season and cool-season weeds proliferate at different times of the year, and it will be your advantage to recognize which weeds are in season so you can more easily expect them in your garden and prepare your anti-weed arsenal more effectively. Some of the weed seeds may also lie in your garden for a while before germinating, so make sure that you are able to cultivate your soil properly to prevent them from ever taking root and sprouting up.

Make sure that your garden space is filled up with the good stuff - the things YOU want planted there. If you leave any portion idle or bare, the weeds are more likely to secure that area for their growth. If you are unable to fill the entire area with desired plants, you may want to consider planting a ground cover crop to keep the weeds from invading your plant territory. (This can also be a great fertilizer later, as you can till the ground cover in at the end of the season, to provide extra nutrients for next year's garden.)

In the case where weeds have already grown large by the time you discovered them, chopping them off from the ground may be the most efficient way to remove them. Some of these weeds however may have deep roots, and will continue to sprout up even after you cut them down. But repetitive cutting down of those weeds will help eliminate them for good after some time.

Image via WikipediaThe use of herbicides and pesticides is not advised, and should not be necessary when you are able to do good cultivation of your land. The pesticides and herbicides, especially the commercially available ones, may prove to have other harmful effects. They may also pose as a threat to other useful organisms living in your garden, so they are not a viable option for organic and sustainable gardening.

Mulching and composting are other great ways to help maintain the soil and ward off the weeds. Ultimately, you should not encounter huge problems in weed management if you are able to keep them from gaining a foot hold in your garden in the first place.

If you are really consistent in cultivating your space, and eliminating weeds at their first sign, you will have taken a big step towards making the most out of your organic vegetable garden.

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