What kind of weeder are you?

I get a bizarre satisfaction from using my dandelion digger. I enjoy the search and destroy missions. And after a few years you have a pretty good idea of what is going to come up and where. I have one bed that produces thistles. I love to get my gloves and a digger and go for them - and it's great when you reach mid-summer and they are completely under control!

I'm a container gardener, so the weeds I've pulled can be counted on two fingers of one hand! LOL

I weed by hand without gloves, hence my deformed and stained index finger! I go to work on Monday with bandaids around the tips of my fingers where painful splits have occured and swear to myself I'll wear gloves the NEXT TIME I go out weeding. I agree with Potagere though, with gloves I can't "feel" the weeds & roots.
It's 104 degrees outside right now, so I think the weeds are going to have to keep 'till another day.

Sheet mulch (newsprint) + bark in shrub beds.
Dig 'em in the more crowded beds that I can't sheet mulch.
Torch 'em in the gutter & driveway with a weed dragon.
Spray the bindweed with glyphosate.
Pick the dandelion flowers in the lawn. Overseed with clover and hope it will crowd out everything else.
Ignore the creeping bellflower in the lawn. Can't do nothin' about it without poisoning the dog. Glyphosate doesn't kill it.

norcalgardner2...check out the new Nitrile (sp?) gloves, they're very thin and last a long time. You can still feel the weeds. I started using them two years ago and wouldn't be without them now.

Sally, where do you buy them? I'll give them a try.

I got mine at the local home show. There was a co-op here on DG not long ago and I'm seeing them in nurseries now. They look like they're too thin to hold up, but definitely not. I know you can find them if you Google it.

ah, a weed is but a flower out of place.....

I pull my out by hand, no gloves, but the best time is while the sprinkler is running on a fine mist (that the hummingbirds enjoy) or as it is raining softly. That usually makes it easier to pull the root and all out and a good reason to play in the water!!!

just about all except for burning.

D

I have used some heavy duty latex gloves I bought at Harbor Fright and they work just fine for weeding. Don't get near the thorns on rose bushes though. I to out in back and without thinking about having no gloves on I end up pulling a few weeds. Really plays havoc with your hands, and just try and get them clean.

Like a lot of Fl gardeners we get so many weeds that I have to use weedkillers, but I do enjoy the hand work it's relaxing, but too many weeds and too much heat. I haven't got that much time to relax!

fauna4flora
"I added a bunch of bromeliads to a bed that allowed weeds to pop up to acheive exactly that! "

I don't know what you mean......... achieve exactly what???

Preen works great in cutting beds but you have to clean it perfectly by hoe and hand to bother even using Preen.

All of the above PLUS some of them I just tell people they are not weeds but part of my native plants gardening effort...

Lol! I love that one, may I borrow it? Ha, ha, ha

Sure, but it helps if you can give the "native plant" it's latin name so they think you know what you are talking about.

hahahaha yeah, latin names sound so good, and are so good & confusing to lots of peeps!!
I know that Datura sounds good, but Jimson Weed sounds like a terrible plant LOL

Here's MY weed lol

I said that I use a tool because I often grab my handy dandy weed picker. But, then again, I probably just as often pull them by hand.

When I weed I mostly do it by hand although if it gets too hot I start ignoring stuff:lol: My containers of daylilies and lilies out back on the patio are infested with grass and weeds thrown when the apt. maintainance guy mows (without a grass catcher!). Not sure what to do about that other than pluck out and replace any displaced soil if I let them get too big and take up too much space.

I recently bought my first weed chemical and am a bit nervous about using it. We have our parking area right up against the front sidewalk and the sidewalk it right up against the flowerbed. In the crack between the parking lot and the sidewalk are huge tough clumps of assorted grass and weeds. I bought Ortho's Groundclear for them but I really am scared I'll off the good plants behind me in the bed:lol: I may just pour it in a glass jar and paint it on with a sponge brush:)

It sounds like one of the weed burning torches would be a good solution there, dmac. They run on propane and come with a hose to hook it up to any propane tank. I use the very small propane canisters that go with most bar-b-que grills. Just look for a torch that has a good, small adjustable flame so that you don't end up with the scorched earth flame-thrower like I got.

Jeremy

Typically I look at weeds and think, "They're still small, they're not hurting anything." And then the next time I look they are all over the place and I'm discouraged.

Some of them, like the poke sallet, and the wild carrot, are pretty. Even the Japanese stilt grass is not so bad looking, but hereabouts we are exhorted to remove it.

I'm trying to come up with a combination of raised beds, eco-lawn, ground covers and stepping-stones that will simply pre-empt them.

I put down a thick layer of newspaper in early spring. It really works!

I use all of the mentioned methods except chemicals. I also ignore quite a few.

Thanks for the tip Jeremy...smaller for me would probably be the better option re the torch:lol: Although...it would be fun to use the one like you have to mess with the neighbors;)
Hadn't considered burning them out.

For the weeds growing up in the gravel driveway, I use the boiling water bath from canning. When the jam in finished, I dump the scalding water on the weeds and cook them right in the ground, roots and all!

That's a good one too! My late neighbor lady used to dump vinegar on them but let me tell you--in 90 degree weather, walking out your front door to that smell isn't pleasant:LOL:

So, if you want to relax in the house and don`t want company use the vinegar. :)

I use weedkiller from the store too if things are getting out of control in areas but I remember a conversation here on DG about vinegar killing weeds...It does work better if it is hot and sunny.

Also weeds can be pretty. Some people call this flowering vine a weed because it grows and covers everything in it`s path (which is every which way like it or not) but by the lake it has room and nothing else would grow in this spot.

Karen

Edited: For a afterthought. :)

P.S. I have a friend who uses ammonia poured in dishes by the door as a natural way to deter bugs and I about passed out. Imagine the vinegar on the front walk and ammonia by the door = pizza guy falls over = forgets you owe = free pizza :)



This message was edited Aug 17, 2008 3:54 PM

LOL!

I sorta shot myself in the foot. Last year I let my garlic chives go to seed. Let me tell you, I can pull all my weeds by hand EXCEPT those darn chive seedlings thay are EVERY WHERE! I've created my own weeds!!!

Yep, ammonia and vinegar vapors would probably be strong enough to keep skunks away. LOL

Karen, your vine is probably considered a weed because it is a Japanese invasive (Clematis terniflora http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/683/) though I could be wrong because I still have trouble distinguishing it from our native Clematis virginiana http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1168/ Amazing, though they are so similar, one's a weed and one is a wildflower. I have C. terniflora now blooming in my yard also. Even though I know it is an invader, the scent when it flowers is too wonderful to miss.

Jeremy

Jeremy, You are correct. The distinguishing feature would be the leaves. On the terniflora the leaves have smooth edges but on the virginiana they have jagged edges.

Karen

But I have strawberries that the last owner planted and I CAN'T GET RID OF THEM!!!

'Ya got to hand weed them to get out the roots! ... Unless of course they're stubborn, then I use a reciprocating saw, a blow torch, a sledgehammer, a...

I have already tried to hand weed them. Then I put those tarp thing over them and then pine straws. Still they come right back up. We've even spray round up, which I don't like to use and rarely use.

I think the birds keeping 'replanting' them. hee,hee,hee

I think you're right. If I didn't have so many plants around that area, I would love to burn it - although, I think our county has a "burning" law.

if i wasn't afraid of burning down the house i would have taken a torch to a few of my flower beds. when we bought the house there was 2 feet of snow on the ground... so when i saw how overgrown the beds were i decided everything was a weed and had to go. (they had been left the stuff go for 7-10 years, it was scary)

we're still pulling and digging. things up in an attempt to put a retaining wall and full sun flower bed in before fall. i'm not sure we'll make it.

anybody got a flamethrower i can borrow...?

I never remove anything until I see it flower. Then I have to wrestle with its right to life. Then I wrestle with whether or not it is invasive in our locale. Then I pull it out and let it lie: back to the earth. Unless of course it's actually contributing positively in someway to the overall function of the garden, in particular: bees, butterflies, hummingbirds or winter birds. I usually watch it for a while to see who visits it. At the conclusion of its apparent positive function, I will remove it if I don't want it there.

I live in the Catskill Forest, so there are abundant areas of local wildflowers, some of which are called weeds because they aren't massive polyploid monstrous mutants of the original species (see the new double daylilies, looking hemorrhoidal, all contorted and deformed).

We're currently under siege by The Kudzu of the Catskills: Japanese Knotweed, a gracious 6 to 8 foot bamboo-like plant which someone brought in as an ornamental for their landscaping and now it is reproducing exponentially, out of control, establishing vast colonies where nothing else can grow, making streambanks unstable and ultimately changing the food chain for indigenous species -- plant, insect, and animal.

But -- GEE. It's so LOVELY.

It's very hard to get people to see it as a dangerous rampantly invasive weed.

This message was edited Sep 6, 2008 9:15 PM