How to get rid of weeds: 101
Weeds can completely take over your garden choking out the things you want to preserve like your vegetables, perennials, annuals and sanity. Here's how to get rid of weeds.
I'm going to start off with a controversial statement about weeding: you're never going to be able to get rid of them. With weeds, all you can hope to do is keep them under control. Like a patch of eczema or a toddler coming down from a birthday party high.
There are three ways to go about getting rid of these garden goons: killing, pulling and preventing them from growing in the first place.
If you were a grazing animal on the African plains weeding would be easy and dinner. But you are not and it is not.
Table of Contents
Weed Killers
NATURAL
There are a ton of home remedies online to kill weeds naturally. Some work, some don't. These two do:
Boiling Water
Boiling water is a method I use for weed removal that does work, but it needs to be repeated over and over to kill weeds that have taproots.
DIY Weed Killer
8 cups vinegar
½ cup salt (epson or table)
½ tablespoon dish soap
When mixed, these ingredients are actually a powerful weed killer with the vinegar and salt drying out the weed and the dish soap creating enough surface tension to the liquid to allow the mixture to absorb into the weed as opposed to sitting on top and sliding off.
BIOCHEMICAL
Biochemical weed killers use chemicals to target and kill weeds usually after only one application.
Before you dismiss the big bad chemicals, some weeds are more dangerous to you than the chemicals are. Coming into contact with Giant hogweed, pokeweed or deadly nightshade for example will really have you yearning for that time you bumped into that joke of a weed, poison ivy.
Selective Herbicides
These weed killers target specific weeds like broadleaf weeds (dandelions) or annual grass weeds.
Non Selective Herbicides
KILL EM ALL. That's what these herbicides do. Non selectives kill everything they come into contact with; weeds, grass, perennials and more.
Pulling Weeds
Even the most stubborn weeds pull out easily from loose soil. If you don't have loose/sandy soil your best advantage over the weed is to wet the soil.
BY HAND
Keep a bucket nearby to throw weeds into. Grab the weed at the point where it touches the soil and pull. There's nothing else to explain.
WEEDING TOOLS
Most of them are useless or labour intensive gadgets but you don't know which is which until you try them out. These 2 weeding tools are all you need. One for pulling weeds with taproots, and one to remove small annual weeds:
- Fiskars 4 claw weeder - Fantastic for big weeds with taproots. If you water first you'll get the whole taproot out 80% of the time.
- Dutch hoe - Perfect for effortlessly removing small weeds by cutting them off at the soil line. You don't need to remove the roots from annual weeds. As long as you cut the top off of them they'll die of starvation. *** This tool is especially good because it doesn't disturb the top layer of your soil ***
- Cobrahead - If you like a hand tool for taking out weeds this is the one to get. It also works to create furrows for planting.
For big carpets of weeds that are 4" high or more (like I see on my vegetable garden beds every spring) I find the fastest way to get rid of them when they're at that point is to pull them by hand in clumps. Sorry for the bad news. There's no magic way.
The only way to go from this to that ... is work of some kind.
Preventing
COVER CROPS
Bare soil is a weed's best friend. They're lovers. It gives them all the sunshine, water and space they need to take over. Planting something - anything - will diminish spring weeds.
Plant your cover crop for weed suppression in the fall. Typical cover crops used to prevent weeds are radish, mustard, collards and rye. However, remember, if you plan to plant in that bed you're going to have to cut back/remove that entire cover crop before planting.
So basically ... you'll have to weed.
Choose cover crops for bare land that will be unused for a year or more unless you own a combine and a farmer plates on your vehicle.
LANDSCAPE FABRIC
Regular landscape fabric is useless, as anyone who has ever tried it knows.
Agricultural landscape fabric on the other hand is very effective at blocking out weeds and will last for years without degrading. I use massive rolls but the fabric I linked to above is very reasonably sized at 4' x 10'. Perfect for garden beds. Just cover the beds with it in the fall and remove it before planting to prevent weeds from sprouting.
It's also a superb option for paths.
MULCHING
Mulching garden beds or pathways works quite well. The odd weed will get through but the majority of them will stay in the dark.
Mulching looks nice, but it needs to be redone every couple of years because it decomposes fairly quickly (which is great for your soil.)
NO DIG GARDENING
No dig gardening (where you don't turn the soil or till it) IS a bit of a magical solution to preventing weeds. How? By keeping weed seeds hidden underground, never to see the light of day.
250 square feet of garden or lawn soil
contains 1 million dormant weed seeds in the top 6"
Yes, you read that right. There are millions of weed seeds hiding in your soil (known as a seed bank) So when you dig your soil, you're exposing thousands of weed seeds to the sunshine it so craves.
The less you disturb the top layer of your soil, the fewer weeds you will have. Plain and simple.
What is a weed anyway??
People love to say that a weed is anything that grows where you don't want it to. But that's kind of a silly explanation don't you think?
Sure it's technically true but to be more specific a weed is something that thrives in poor soil and is aggressive. It has the ability to multiply and take over a garden at an alarming rate either due to barfing weed seeds everywhere or through creepy runner roots.
If for instance, a peony was popping up between my bricks instead of a dandelion I wouldn't refer to it as a weed even though I don't want it there. Why? Because it isn't a weed.
Common Perennial Weeds
- Dandelion
- Bindweed
- Clover
- Creeping Charlie
- Plantain
- Thistle (looks like a dandelion but leaves are covered in needles)
- Poison Ivy
- Quickgrass
- Dock
- Wild violet
- Nettle
Common Annual Weeds
- Crabgrass
- Lamb's Quarter
- Purslane
- Pigweed
- Knotweed
- Black nightshade
- Velvet leaf
- Spurge
- Chickweed
- Ragweed
Benefits of weeds
Weeds actually do a great job of conditioning and protecting your soil so don't use up all your pent up hatred on them. Save some of that hatred for pests like vine borers or wine coolers.
- The taproots of perennial weeds aerate the soil.
- Their leaf canopy provides food for animals and microbes.
- They shade the soil reducing the need to water.
- Weeds add organic compounds to the soil and help improve nutrient deficiencies.
- Roots of weeds provide food for worms and attract them to your garden beds.
Leaving your vegetable garden to cover itself in annual weeds in the fall once harvesting is done can actually improve your garden. They act as a cover crop.
Weeds protect the soil, creating a much richer, moist and loose soil to work with in the spring.
The TRICK is to pull the weeds in the spring before they set seed and start the cycle all over again.
Quick Weeding Tips
- Pull weeds as soon as they pop up.
- Pull weeds after a rain or watering.
- Deal with them BEFORE they flower and create seeds.
- Don't walk on and compact planting areas. Weeds are happy in compact soil, most other plants are not.
- Wear gloves - some weeds cause skin irritation.
- For short weeds use a dutch hoe, for big weeds with a taproot use the Fiskars claw weeder.
- When removing weeds with runners (like quackgrass) you need to completely dig up the soil to find all of the runners and remove them. This in turn reveals more annual weed seeds. So, yeah. Quackgrass sucks.
- Grasp big bunches instead of individual weeds for better leverage and better success.
Compost them. The easiest way to do this is to just throw all your weeds in one place to create a pile. You don't need a compost bin to compost. Hot composting is the best option for composting weeds because it will kill any weed seeds.
Once you cut the top off of an annual weed it won't grow back. If you cut the top off of a perennial weed it WILL grow back but weaker. It can only do that so many times before the tap or runner root will die. So keep at it.
Either keep a 5 gallon bucket beside you to throw them in or leave them on the ground and rake them into a pile at the end of the chore.
I believe you are now sufficiently armed to weed like a wildebeest. Good luck.
I followed your link for the cobra and watched a few hilariously informative videos from reviewers. For that entertainment alone, I thank you for sharing this article. Definitely going to pick up a Dutch hoe and probably the cobra thing (that guy in the video really sold me)
Sharing your article with everyone I know who gardens. This has been a really nice series and I appreciate you putting your experience and information together for us! I have been gardening since I was knee-high to a grasshopper but I always like to see how other people do things and learn new tips and tricks.
Give the puppy a kiss from his internet auntie. -d
Thanks Dani! Like my mom always says - you can always learn something. I take all kinds of courses, even if I have experience in the subject because there really is always something you'll learn. :) Like today in the garden I learned rabbits ALSO love young dahlia plants.😆 ~ karen!
I use a propane torch. No bending, no poison, no dirt to fling off the roots. One must, of course, be careful.
I've heard people like those - my brother in law for one - but I don't think I've used one for weeds myself. This is the age I am. I can't remember what I've tried and what I haven't, lol. ~ karen!
I thought I knew everything about weeds after growing up on a farm. Well, not after reading your post today. Composting weeds! Who would have thunk it. Can't wait to give it a try.
It works great! The more you turn the pile the better chance you have at getting it hot enough to kill the weeds. But honestly, in the area that I garden there's no chance my garden will be weed free ever, no matter what. ~ karen!
The worst weed in my garden is good old buttercup, ranunculus. That and horsetail keep me on my knees - weeding on my knees that is. I have a long sharp tool I got from Lee Valley that helps with the horsetail but it being the oldest plant on the planet (apparently), it is almost impossible to eradicate, so knees on a comfy pad it is. The vinegar and salt method did not work on either. Shooting my neighbours who don't do anything about their field of buttercup might help though. Too bad they are also good friends and that murder is illegal. Oh, and I seldom mulch, never with straw, because of mice and -- yuk -- rats, especially the latter. We live in the country. What can I say? Ah well, back to the weeding.
Any tips on poison ivy??? WE have a lot of it in the woods. I am working at getting rid of invasives and underplanting with native plants, but the poison ivy is getting me!!
I have horrible cases of poison ivy, which become systemic and make me miserable for the better part of a month.
I won't use herbicides because I have dogs, so just suit up with two layers of rubber gloves, a face mask, and go at it - putting the weeds in a plastic bag to seal up the poison. Then get a supply of AllStop - their poison ivy cleanser is gritty and immediately gets rid of the urishol oil. It works! I haven't had an outbreak in years as I rip off the gloves, turn them inside out, and wash my hands and forearms right away.
Not getting any money from All Stop - just ordered my new supply last week.
Most of what I’m going to write is based on my last year of tutelage under Dr. Elaine Ingham, one of the world’s leading soil microbiologists, founder of the SoilFoodWeb school, and Matt Powers, world renowned permaculture teacher, plus sixty odd years of gardening experience.
Except for the potato bed, I’ve not dug or tilled my garden for twelve years. Until I enrolled in said courses, I could weed my entire 1200 sq ft garden in five minutes. It had mulch of shredded leaves or straw on it year round. With my newfound knowledge, it now takes less than a minute. Unless the weeds will grow bigger than my intended crop, or are a perennial type that will inhibit the crop , they get to stay. I don’t believe there’s even one perennial weed in my garden.
Weeds are talking to to us. Their presence indicates a condition of the soil. For instance, dandelions indicate low calcium, so with their deep tap roots, they go looking for calcium to heal the garden… if we don’t kill them. When they’ve healed the soil, they’ll go away, in the meantime, they’re providing calcium to our plants. Weeds are also a living mulch keeping a living root in the soil, without which bacteria and fungi cannot survive. They’ll either sporulate or die. Plants feed the biology which in turn harvest the nutrients the plant needs. The plant actually encodes its needs into the exudates it provides to the biology. No plant roots means no natural nutrient cycling.
I used to use remedies similar to yours, but now know that they destroy the soil microbial life. Weed killers, herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, are the enemy of all soil life and are destroying our soil and planet. Combined with tillage of millions of acres of farmland (and home gardens), modern agricultural practices are one of the biggest contributors to climate change. The chemicals kill the biology and tillage releases the sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere, then there’s no structure left in the soil and it blows or washes away very easily. Best estimates are that we have fifty years of good cropping soil left on the planet, but Regenerative Agricultural practices can reverse that.
Epsom salt and table salt are two very different critters. Epsom salt is magnesium (not sodium), and if the soil is rich in clay, the salts can upset the magnesium to calcium ratios and turn the clay to an impervious anaerobic solid block in which only weeds will grow. Many of them love anaerobic conditions.
Converting a garden to no till, keeping a constant mulch of living plants and/or straw/leaves/grass clippings etc. will restore your soil within a couple years. Nigel Palmer has an excellent easy to follow book titled The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments. The URL is to a very knowledgeable Canadian permaculture practitioner who has created an excellent summary of the soil food web.
I'm just going to add your link into this comment so people can more easily see it ... https://youtu.be/LO-ostC1q-4 ~ karen!
Absolutely agree with Garth. I have an allotment since 2016 and started
it as no till. I add compost on top then mulch. I was using cacao shell until Covid interrupted transport across from the USA. So I put pine bark mini nuggets on a couple of beds. Not thickly but enough to keep the
moisture in. I still get Bindweed. Recently I watched a video from one of US universities that the seed will remain viable in the ground for over 60 years. So I guess I'll just have to keep pulling them whenever they show up and hope after 100 years I starve the roots.
There was one where I could not get at it. I used a small amount of Roundup. The bindweed disappeared.
But Purslane is a good ground cover along the inside edges of beds where
I'm not planting anything yet. It's not offensive and easy to remove when necessary. There are millions and millions of Purslane seeds in my soil.
If I disturb the soil, in a matter of seconds, I have a monoculture of Purslane.
I use Chamomile as a placeholder. It germinates in the autumn, survives the winter even if the temperature goes to minus 27C and is one of the first to flower in the spring. It's useful and I like the scent. When I want to plant out, I cut the Chamomile down to the crowns. It's an annual so doesn't come back and the roots can rot in the soil. The stems get tough.
Once you have Chamomile, if you let the flowerheads dry, you will always have Chamomile. I'd rather have a 'useful' weed.
I'm a fan of short-term tarping to kill and prevent weeds during the growing season. Low tech, and buys me time to keep certain garden beds from getting overrun with weeds while I am working elsewhere. (I run a small low till/no dig veggie market garden.)
A 4-6 week occultation can really knock weeds back and prevent new weed seedlings from surviving. It's also a handy way to prep a new garden area or clean out a bed after harvesting a crop like lettuce. Leaving the tarp on longer than 6 weeks in summer isn't great for the soil biology.
We use an agricultural tarp, but heavy landscape fabric can also work. Just make sure it's well weighted to prevent the wind from taking it someplace it shouldn't be.
Agreed -quackgrass sucks
Yes! I meant to mention that long term tarping is bad for the soil. It really does work though. ~ karen!
I interviewed Jack Alex who wrote the book Ontario Weeds. He was fascinating. What stuck in my mind was this quote.
“No plant can withstand continuous hoeing.”
I rely on that. The worst weed in his opinion-bindweed.
It's true. (as you know, lol) If you continue to remove the young leaves of weeds as they sprout they're going to die eventually - no matter what. My community garden which has been organic for about 30 years is your basic weed sanctuary. ~ karen!
The biggest problem I'm having right now is with wild violets. They are taking over my garden! Working on it but not sure I'll win.
My book, When Weeds Talk, says violets indicate low calcium and low manganese. Check you soil Ph before using lime to correct if low. Lime is a very temporary fix that rapidly leaches away.
For me, the best way to combat weeds is to sheet mulch. I cover the area I want cleared of weeds or grass with wet cardboard or wet newspaper. I make sure the ends overlap. I also take off any tape from the carboard and don't use the glossy newspaper. Keep everything wet. I then put a layer of bark chips (can get them free from folks cutting down trees) about 4--6 inches deep. Keep it moist by watering once a week (or if it actually rains where you live, let Mother Nature water for you--we are in drought and Mother Nature has been on vacation for a bit). I like using the bark chips as it looks nice but straw (not hay--too many weed seeds). In about six months you will have the best soil in town for planting and weed seeds will have been killed. I also use a good 4 inches of mulch on my beds--keeps moisture in and weeds out.
I'm using 6- 8 inches of bark chip over wet cardboard in 8x4 ft planting boxes and it looks great - no weeds and is turning into great soil. I can't wait to plant veggies in it.
I have to disagree with one of your "weeds" in the weed list. Lamb's quarters are a great food item. Easier to grow than spinach in much of the world. More nutritious as well. Many countries grow it as a main garden crop instead of spinach...blindfolded, you wouldn't be able to tell cooked lamb's quarters from cooked spinach.
I have to pass on a tale about the vinegar weed spray so many claim really works on weeds. Our local garden club decided to run a season long experiment a few years back. Our group of over 100 members pretty much all participated as least to a degree. Some of us continued the experiment over the entire season. One member worked up the guidelines and a chart to help us work the experiment. We could use 1 of 3 recipes, with only the strength and amount of vinegar changing, and table salt vs epson salt. We were to only spray our weeds on bright warm sunny days. We were to take a picture before spraying, the day after and a week after. We could spray any type of weed but we were supposed to identify the main weed/weeds by name as often as possible and as to them being annual or perennial weeds.
By the end of June we had already decided the experiment was a failure. Many stopped using it after 2-3 gallons of the spray because basically vinegar is far from free. Some of us used it all summer long despite the cost.
What we found was that some very young annual weeds were completely eliminated after one spray on a hot sunny day. But only if they were in the just emerging from the soil stage. And since there are often thousands of seeds in the soil waiting to emerge, within a day or two the area was once again covered in newly emerging weeds and thus you had to reapply. Weeds that had any age to them often would turn brown but in less than a week, new growth would appear. Many perennial weeds wouldn't even turn brown. Even using very strong horticultural vinegar, which is quite expensive in our area, didn't work much better...
So we pretty much gave this experiment, with hundreds of actual efforts, 2 thumbs down. In order to kill off your weeds, you would have to be militant about spraying it every time you have a flush of newly emerging weeds. And the salt is not a good thing to have accumulate in your soil.
It is so much better to use a shuffle type hoe on those newly emerging weeds and repeat when ever necessary. You save money on the vinegar and keep the soil from having a toxic build up of salt.
Yes, lambs quarters are good as is purslane (great texture). But most people in North America think of it/treat it as a weed. When I grew quinoa one year I found out they're the same family because I couldn't distinguish between my "weeds" and my quinoa seedlings. I meant to write, that like boiling water the vinegar method needs repeating over and over. ~ karen!
So is purslane! It's very high in vitamin E & C and can be used as a leaf veggie. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It can also remove salt from saline soil. In fact, I'm growing purslane as a cover crop in my raised beds.
We actually use the vinegar & table salt solution to get rid of weeds in the driveway. Our driveway is one-car wide but 3 to 4-car long. It takes a few summers of twice applications each summer. From a driveway nearly completely covered with weeds, it now has only a handful, very manageable with hand-pulling.
I eat purslane as well. And I am using it a lot as a living mulch. It seems to be a good thing for that function as it disappears on it's own once its has lived out it's life cycle. No need to plow it under. Each year we get more and more purslane that comes up in the raised beds where I grow my larger cropped plants such as peppers and tomatoes. In the 2 years since I started doing this, it seems I have less bad weeds and more purslane...
Hi Karen, What about gout weed? It’s awful stuff and it flourishes.
This is a truly noxious plant that garden centres still sell. Shame on them! Best chance to kill them for the average gardener is to heavily tarp them, WELL BEYOND their obvious border, for two years… they’ll try to escape… or be super diligent for as long as it takes using Karen’s favourite hoe or pruning shears. Roots cannot survive unless fed by leaves. I’m presently working with a client who inherited a yard full of goutweed and horsetail, but we’re using a biological approach in an effort to make them feel unwelcome. I think we can convince the the horsetail to leave, but not sure about the goutweed, so part of the yard is being covered with layers of wet cardboard and then permanently mulched with wood chips and then over planted with Blue Rug Juniper.
Hi Garth,
I have had horsetail in my garden for several years. I keep cutting it at the soil line as it is intertwined with some plants I don't want to kill. unfortunately it continues to spread. any other suggestions other than suffocating my front garden with wet cardboard. Many thanks.
Thank you so much. Yes, my neighbour “accidentally” planted it and it’s been a brute to control. She’s apologized a dozen times, but it’s just one of those things.
We bought a home bordering forest in Oregon one November.
In March it became obvious the property was a mixture of Himalayan blackberry vines and horsetail. Yuck. Digging a bed for roses you could see the horsetail emanating from >2 feet down which explained why you can’t pull them out. An organic solution to horsetail doesn’t exist so…cut them leaving an inch or so above the soil and paint them with undiluted RoundUp knowing that it will destroy the horsetail and plants an inch or two beyond. Dig out the blackberries and their roots. Now I live in Hawaii so I can weed year round and when I pick up my hori hori knife, I pick up da Preen.
Thanks for the great tips. I like the vinegar and salt solution, but not sure of the salt amount.
8 cups vinegar
1/2 salt?????
Does that mean 4 cups of salt?
Hi Maggie! Sorry, it's 1/2 cup salt. I've added that in now. ~ karen!
Usually 1/2 cup.
What do you recommend for mulch for a vegetable garden?
Shredded leaves and/or straw
(I'm just going to add I'm not in love with straw if you have an abundance of mice and voles because they LOVE straw to live, hide and make babies in.) ~ karen!
Leaves, bark, shavings, wood chips or thermal plastic mulch. You can use grass clippings as well, but not on their own, they're best mixed in with leaves or bark. On their own grass clippings can clump and quickly stink as they break down. ~ karen!
How much salt?
Is the vinegar the regular distilled vinegar or is it the 20% stuff from the garden center?
1/2 cup. Sorry about that, I've fixed it now. :) ~ karen!
I have to admit I was a little bit more excited about this post when I misread the as "Wedding: Killing, Pulling and Preventing".
It was a few seconds of "so that's where Keren has been, preventing weddings!"
LOLOL! Yep - out at the banquet halls pushing cakes off of tables and cutting tin cans off of all the cars. ~ karen!
Weeds ...NO problem....do you know how to get rid of vinca??!!!! I HATE the stuff.
The best tools for weeding at least for us senior gardeners are a comfy cushion and hooked flooring knife or two. We forget where things are sometimes. A yellow ribbon tied in the little handle hole prevents it from getting lost too often.
Hi Karen!
Is the salt in the diy weedkiller a 1/2 cup? Thanks!
Shoot! Yes! Thanks for pointing that out, I'll fix it. ~ karen!
It must truly be a labor of love for those of you who enjoy gardening sufficient to undertake it. Sincere kudos. And like they say about the world-renowned farmer -"She is oustanding in her field."