How do weeds penetrate your landscape? Most weeds enter your garden with wind, birds, rain, soil air conditioning, portable soil, garden seeds that are not cleaned of weeds, or gardeners with seeds already on their clothes. They will always be present in your landscape, but with proper planning and management your landscape can thrive like a landscaped lawn or garden, without the hassle associated with overgrown weeds.
Most weeds grow on unsanitary lawns. Weeds feel good when there is no need for regular landscape care. Regular weed control, improved soil (adding compost or mulch), regular watering and fertilizer application, for example, will greatly increase your chances of not being weededs on the landscape.
How to increase your chances that there will be no weeds on the landscape:
Make a landscape plan. Your landscaping plan should include areas of your garden suitable for sun/shadow needs, problem areas where the soil is exposed to the sun (which increases the chances of weed seeds sprouting).
Remove all ingrained weeds from your landscape. Weeds can be removed by digging or pulling. Direct weed control and local use of herbicides increase your chances of long-term improvement of your landscape while protecting the surrounding ecosystem. Pesticides and herbicides should be used as a last resort to control weeds in your landscape. Most landscape designers can determine which lawn management program is best suited to your landscape. Before you apply any pesticides or herbicides, your landscape designer should correctly determine the type of weed in your garden. Most weeds have different characteristics when it comes to growth and appearance. Common weeds include: annual, winter, summer, perennial, broadleaf and grass.
Annual weeds live for a year and grow from seeds. Crabgrass is a preventable annual weed by planting healthy grass on bare areas, mowing a lawn between 2 1/2 and 3 inches high and maintaining a thick, healthy lawn with existing shady trees. These applications will prevent the subsequent germination of hemp seeds.
Perennial weeds will live for more than two years and will often be inactive in the summer months and reappear in the fall. Common perennial weeds include mallards and dandelions. For the mallard, treat a section of glyphosate (known brands include Roundup or Kleenup), the soil should be plowed and resown within a week.
Take control measures to ensure there are no weeds in the landscape, such as removing seedlings ingrained in your landscape, developing a landscape care plan, repeating your plan to prevent weeds every year and maintaining thick grass growth in the landscape – all of these are ways you can reduce the amount of weeds in your landscape.