so what do you say we spend a little time in the garden today all right all right all right
today it's pretty wet out here but i think it's a good time to talk about weeds so in a previous
video a video i did a week or so ago i was going around all my 10 different plots here and then
we were talking about what our plans were for spring what we're going to plant in each plot
we had several people comment on that video referring to how many garden plots we have how
large our garden is total which is about a quarter acre of garden a lot of people comment saying
man how do you keep up with the weeds how do you weed all that and keep it so clean you know i'd
never be able to do that i'd never have time to manage that much garden and really be able to keep
it weeded and everything and it got me thinking maybe some folks got it all wrong so instead
of thinking about the weeds themselves how are you going to have time to fight all these weeds
how are you going to have time to remove all these weeds you need to be thinking about the weed seed
bank okay so the weed seed bank is the reservoir of weed seeds that you have in your garden plot
so if you have a large amount of weed seeds in your weed seed bank when temperatures warm up
when you know you've got some rain coming you're going to have a huge explosion of weeds and that's
going to really really increase your workload in your garden however if we can keep that weed
seed bank to a minimum there's not a whole lot of weeding to do because there weren't
any weed seeds there to germinate so don't think about the weeds think about the weed seed bank
so here's a little example i thought of that might help this make more sense so imagine you go to
a health coach or fitness instructor and say hey man i want to lose some weight i consume
5 000 calories a day my problem is i just don't have enough time in the day to do that much
exercise to burn 5000 calories and so i'm always consuming more calories than i have time
to burn what do you think that fitness coach or that health instructor is going to say they're
probably not going to sit there and try to come up with crazy ways for you to burn more calories
the easy solution would be you know don't consume as many calories you don't have as many to burn as
many to worry about you know simple solution there kind of the same thing with weeds here
if we are doing things that are making us have a huge big weed seed bank or weed seed reservoir
i mean we're going to drive ourselves crazy trying to always weed and keep up with the weed growth
in our gardens but if we can do things to manage that weed seed bank and keep that reservoir weed
seeds low it's going to make life a lot easier on us so if we understand that controlling the weed
seed bank is one of the key or primary ways to success in managing weeds in the vegetable garden
now let's think about how do we control that weed seed bank what things are going to contribute to
it and how are we able to actually reduce that weed seed bank so there are a few factors that
are going to add weeds to weed seeds to the weed seed bank that we cannot control one of them
being animals you know birds and other animals pooping out weed seeds that they're eating in
our garden plots we can't really control that now that's not going to be a significant contribution
but one thing to consider that we really cannot control the other one we can't control is the wind
wind is going to blow whether you want it to or not and unless you're growing in a high tunnel
or inside a greenhouse you can't stop the wind from blowing weed seeds into your garden spot
now what we can do is make sure our grass or whatever we have is cut pretty low around our
garden plots so there's not a lot of weed seeds to be blown into the garden plots you can see
i haven't done a great job with that right here we've got this po anna which is seeded out and the
wind blows it can easily blow those seeds into my garden plot there if i were to cut this down real
close to the ground we wouldn't have near as many weed seeds here that can blow into our garden so
we can do some things to minimize the contribution by the wind but certainly cannot eliminate
wind and animals adding to our weed seed bank so we've got those couple contributions
that we can't really do anything about but now i'm going to tell you the three things
which are really easy to do that you can do to minimize or reduce your weed seed bank in your
garden plots so tip number one on how to reduce your weed seed bank is to not let weeds go to seed
now i haven't done the greatest job of this in my onion plot so we got some of this po anna
here and some chickweed that has obviously gone to seed so how do we not let weeds go to seed
well the easiest way for us is to use what we call frequent shallow cultivation so you know
right now is not a great example because it's just been too wet to get in here but we try to come in
our gardens at least once a week whether they look like they need it or not and just lightly disturb
that first inch or two of soil and that's going to eliminate weeds while they're in their small
thread-like stage when they're a lot easier to eliminate as opposed to when they get large
like this mature and are seeding and are a lot harder to eliminate so if we do some frequent
shallow cultivation weeds never get very big they never go to seed now some people prefer to mulch
their gardens and put down straw or wood chips or whatever you're going to reduce weeds that way but
you're definitely not going to eliminate all weeds and so when you do get weeds you want to go in
through there and manually pull them before they go to seed like this now if you do let a few slip
by you like this right here what you definitely don't want to do is come in here with a tiller and
till this into the soil because all you're doing is contributing to that weed seed bank so you want
to come in and remove these whether it be using the wheel hoe and then taking a rake and getting
them out of here whatever you need to do don't leave this in your soil if you're hand pulling it
or if you're raking it out of here don't cultivate these weed seeds back into your soil
because they will stay there and they will become a problem later so the easiest way number one
don't let weeds go to seed the second way to easily reduce your weed seed bank is by using
cover crops lots of different great options out there as far as cover crops go cool season warm
season cover crops what cover crops do in addition to reducing erosion and scavenging nutrients and
adding nitrogen is they help to break those weed growth cycles when we plant them thick like you
see right here they cover the ground they make a mat over the ground and they're going to keep
those weed seeds from germinating and thriving you know the weed seeds may germinate but because
there's no light there these things this cover crop has pretty much just covered the top of
the soil they're not going to thrive they're not going to grow much and they'll probably just die
you see weeds and pretty much all plants have growth cycles where when certain environmental
cues happen it triggers their growth and they want to grow in a certain amount of time they
want to make seed reproduce and just continue this growth cycle because the goal of that weed is just
to continue to reproduce but if we can break some of those growth cycles by using cover crops here
we can really really reduce our weed seed bank and our weed growth so cover crops work great for
preventing new weeds from forming and they also work great for reducing an existing weed seed bank
and kind of getting it down to manageable numbers and the third way to reduce your weed seed banking
this is probably easiest of all three is to use these silage tarps right here these are a very
very effective tool at reducing your weed seed bank it's pretty simple concept here so we have a
black tarp the thickness on these is six mil and these are impenetrable
to light impenetrable that's a tough word to say right so light cannot penetrate these guys they're
also going to create a somewhat moist environment underneath that mat where your garden plot is
so that moist environment will stimulate those weed seeds that are present to germinate but once
they germinate there's no light there and they're just going to immediately die so we can really
really kind of knock down our weed seed bank with these tarps you can also you know even
magnify the effectiveness of the tarp by doing what we call a tarpon till program where we till
the soil we put the tarp down we let all those weed seeds are in that top soil layer germinate
then die we pull the tarp back we till it again to kind of reshuffle the weed seed deck there
let those weed seeds germinate and die and we can do that three or four times and you just be amazed
at how low your weed pressure will be when you do get around to growing vegetables
in a plot like this so the tarp is a super easy way to do it and doesn't take much
we have sand bags in our kits that hold them down you can use bricks to hold them down
and just kind of set it and forget it with the exception maybe pulling it back
and kind of stirring up the soil every now and then to get more of those weed seeds to germinate
so instead of thinking about or worrying about how you're going to have time to weed your garden
every week and how you're going to deal with all these weeds think about what you can do
to prevent from having so many weeds in the first place and like i said three easy ways to do this
don't let existing weeds go to seed use some cover crops in your rotation and utilize those
silage tarps and all three of those things in conjunction will drastically reduce your weed seed
bank we have a lot of people all the time ask us how do we keep these gardens clean
and they're not perfect but we try to keep them relatively clean and there's no
big secret it's not that tough when you reduce your weed seed bank and you don't really have
to be out here all the time weeding and we just go through these plots once a week from
one of these little thousand square foot plots it takes maybe 10 minutes a week to weed these
when we really take care of our weed seed bank so if you're new to gardening or maybe you've been
gardening a while and you never really thought about weed pressure in terms of the weed seed bank
and you have some more questions definitely put those in the comments below and i'll
try to answer them for you and if some of you out there have been really really successful using one
two or all three of these techniques to reduce your weed seed bank let us know how it worked out
for you so all of our people that are watching can learn from you as well i'll put some links below
to our wheel hoes cover crops and silage tarps so you can start utilizing all three of these steps
in your garden if you enjoyed this video make sure to give me a big thumbs up don't forget
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