Pleasant Hill, CA – Weed Prevention Tips From a Gardener in the East Bay Area

Are you struggling to contain weeds in your lawn? Following these weed prevention tips should be of great help.

Landscaping is a challenging job that demands a lot of time, money, and effort. A large part is about fighting weeds that you can’t permanently eliminate because they keep growing back. Alarmingly, a single pigweed can produce as many as 30,000 seeds per season that can stay alive in the soil for up to 70 years. If you’re a responsible gardener looking to protect your lawn, follow these weed prevention tips from a gardener in the East Bay Area:

Minimize Space between the Plants

Weeds love and exploit open, sunny spaces in-between plants. To minimize that room, consider planting flowers, shrubs, and vegetables at the closest recommended spacing. Instead of growing in rows, use block spacing so that weeds find no open area to invade.

Leverage Pre-Emergent Herbicides

One of the most effective ways to prevent weed growth is to apply a pre-emergent that stops weed seeds from germinating. Designed to target specific weed families, a pre-emergent should be applied after cultivating or in early spring when the weed seeds are about to germinate. Since a pre-emergent is activated by water, give a good soak to the treated area. Applying water draws helps draw the herbicide down to the seed level for action.

Stay Cautious While Cultivating

When creating a new garden bed, there’s no way to avoid hand cultivating or tilling, which is the best way to incorporate organic material and aerate the soil. However, the weed seeds lying dormant under the soil surface can easily go unnoticed. While hand cultivating, if you end up moving the seeds to the top of the soil, they wake up and are boosted into germination. Therefore, avoid unnecessary cultivating and tilling unless it’s absolutely required.

Apply Mulch

Another tested way to prevent weed invasion in your garden is to apply a thick layer of organic mulch around 2 inches deep inside the ground. Apart from helping the soil retain moisture, mulch sets up an unfriendly environment for tilled-up weed seeds and smothers out small weeds. You may use non-organic mulches, but they won’t break down like organic mulches to establish a healthy soil environment. Anyhow, non-organic mulches last longer than organic ones.

Stay Consistent With Your Weeding Efforts

Weeding should be viewed as an ongoing process, and consistent weeding proves more effective than most of us think. By removing each weed seed before it germinates, you effectively prevent hundreds of their offspring. Organize a weeding schedule and stick to it. Pull the weeds gently at the base and dispose of them away from the garden. Try to cause minimum disruption to the soil during the process.

While following the above-explained tips should effectively prevent weeds from infesting your garden, if the situation is serious, you may need professional assistance to treat the affected areas.

For emergency weed control, get in touch with East Bay Gardening at your earliest.