- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
So the other day I had a comment and someone said,
"How do I keep the garden so clean without any weeds?"
Now, whilst I do appreciate that compliment,
there are weeds in this garden,
like here, here, here, and here.
In fact, there are always going to be weeds.
However, there's some great things that you can do
to reduce weed pressure.
And from my understanding, what my viewer left as a comment
had more of an underlying tone
of how do I not let weeds get out of hand.
And that's exactly what I'm gonna show you
how to do in this video.
Whilst you could always attempt to train a chicken
to do some weeding.
What did you do?
You ate the carrots!
No, no, no, no, this is my wheat.
Stop eating the carrots.
No dinner for you tonight.
Poor carrots.
It makes more sense to instead look at what causes
an overwhelming number of weeds to appear.
And for me, there were two things that stand out the most.
From my experience, I've found that the biggest reason
for a ton of weeds to suddenly appear
is from excessive soil disturbance.
And the second reason, coming from neglect.
Now, if you don't already know,
I garden using the fundamentals of no dig as my foundation.
Now, with no dig, the idea is instead of forking
or digging in your organic matter,
what you do is you spread it over the surface
and let nature do the rest of the work.
And by keeping sort of disturbance to a minimum,
there are a fewer weeds.
But how exactly does this happen?
In front of me here, I have a row of Daikon Radish
that I've sown directly into the ground.
Now the ground or the soil is a natural seed bank,
it's full of seeds that are waiting to germinate
when the right conditions present themselves.
So if you dig or you turn over the soil, what you're doing
is you're bringing the seed bank of weed seeds
up towards the surface
which can then trigger them to sprout.
When you dig, you also damage the structure of the soil.
And nature's way of repairing either damaged soil
or bare soil is by growing plants
and this tends to mean growing weeds.
So you can think of plants as being nature's plaster
or band-aid, but not the Bob Geldof type of band-aid.
It's no coincidence that respecting your soil
leads to fewer issues and a reduced weed pressure
is just one of the multiple benefits that you get
from following principles based around no dig gardening.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the other core reasons
for a ton of weeds appearing is from neglect.
Now, I know how easy it is to forget about the garden
during Autumn and Winter.
And this is when a lot of the weeds can really take hold.
And then at the first whiff of warm spring air,
they seem to turn into Triffids
and that's a really demoralizing way
to start your growing season.
Now, there's also another type of neglect
that can happen through the growing season
and I'm gonna give you a prime example right now.
In front of me here is the strawberry bed
which I have neglected.
I've been so invested in all of the annual plants
especially at this time of year,
it's really easy to forget about the perennials.
But I just wanna show you
that not everything needs to be perfect.
I can come through and in 10, 15 minutes,
this whole bed will be completely weed free.
I think it's about just doing things
to the best of our abilities
given the time that we have to garden.
Now, during the season,
there's a particular strategy that I follow
that I feel makes the biggest impact
when it comes to reducing neglect
and keeping on top of the weeds.
Think of weeding, like washing dishes.
If we wash our dishes regularly,
we will always keep on top of them
and not feel overwhelmed by the chore.
However, if we let that dirty dish pile build up
and we find ourselves using something like a tablespoon
to stir your coffee,
then it's an obvious sign that things have got out of hand
and there's no denying
that every time you enter the kitchen,
you are immediately met with a big pile of dishes,
looming and crying out for them to be cleaned.
Now, in a garden, if you let the weeds build up,
you'll then notice every time that you come into the garden,
that it's weedy and a little bit overrun.
And is that really how you want to feel
when you enter the garden?
I don't know about you,
but sometimes, if there's a big pile of dishes,
I do everything I physically can
to avoid going to the kitchen
just so I'm not faced with the pile of dishes.
And you don't really want that feeling
when it comes to gardening because a garden is my escape,
I don't wanna be met with that kind of overwhelm of weeds.
The worst thing about keeping on top of weeds
is that it requires discipline.
Now, if you're anything like me,
I was one of those students
who would always leave their homework until last minute
because that was when I was most motivated to deal with it.
So because of that,
any kind of chore can be a bit of an uphill battle.
What changed it for me was getting a volunteer.
You, you missed a bit.
Was turning or looking at how I could turn
the mundane job of weeding
into something a little bit more enjoyable.
So, firstly, I had to think about, what is the reward?
So the primary rewards of weeding is you end up
with kind of pristine looking beds
that you can feel proud of
and for me, that's enough of a motivation.
But what I also like to do is if I've got a bit of time,
I like to listen to a podcast
or an audio book as I'm doing a bit of weeding
because then I feel like I'm getting more done
in the exact same time.
So if you're one of those people who like
that kind of feeling of productivity
or trying to distract you from the process of weeding,
then I highly recommend trying that.
I think you all know what I'm gonna say
when it comes to dealing with weeds.
And it needs a little and often approach,
say once every week or every couple of weeks,
but what you need to do is to kind of make it fun,
make it exciting.
Mark off at time on the calendar,
get yourself an audio book,
make sure you've got a nice flask of tea,
cup of coffee, or some cake, maybe invite a friend over
and just turn it into a bit of a tradition.
So instead of seeing it as a must do chore
that you try and get out of the way,
turn it into an opportunity
to perhaps have a bit of a social.
And then suddenly you, won't kind of dread
that feeling of having to weed your garden quite as much.
And it's just gonna give you even more opportunity
to really enjoy the space that you have.
Now, when it comes to neglect over Autumn and Winter,
there's one thing that you can do
that'll make the biggest difference,
and that's by putting your raised beds to sleep.
So you're not met with a load of weeds
at the start of the growing season.
I've got a complete guide,
a video just up here showing you exactly
how to prepare your raised beds for Winter.
I hope this video has shown you how no dig
can make a really big impact
in terms of reducing weed pressure
and reducing the amount of weeds.
And just remember to turn it into something fun
and take that little and often approach.
And it may not be perfect,
but it's definitely gonna de-stress you
to enjoy much of the growing season.