(gentle music)
- This is about staying on top of weeds,
not letting them get ahead of you.
I come across a lot of gardeners
who I can see are struggling.
They tell me they've got big issues with weeds
and I want to explain how no dig really helps
and, beyond that, how you still need
a certain level of discipline and being there all the time,
being very alert to weeds,
because weeds don't hang around.
They're always keen to get in there
and take over if they can
and no dig really helps
'cause it doesn't disturb the soil,
so you're not making weeds likely.
It's more than just not exposing weed seeds to light.
It's about keeping your soil calm and happy.
We spend very little time weeding here,
and I think it's because as well as being not disturbed,
the soil is well fed, so it has a surface mulch.
So surface mulches are not only about smothering weeds,
they're about feeding soil life,
which means that soil doesn't need to generate weeds
to correct, say, deficiencies
or restore problems that have arisen
from lack of food or whatever it might be.
If you think of weeds as correctional procedure for soil,
that helps you to not have them in the first place.
So that's where no dig with surface mulching
with organic matter comes in,
but then it's the ongoing maintenance
that's also very important.
And when I say no dig means no weeding,
I shouldn't really say that
because it doesn't literally mean no weeding,
but it's so close to it that I do say that sometimes
because I wanna encourage people to know and experience
a way of gardening that is so much more enjoyable, happy,
and gives you the time and materials, really,
to just crack on and do so much more in your garden.
So here, for example, is some purple sprouting broccoli,
which followed broad beans.
We're now in mid July,
and we planted this broccoli here 18 days ago.
And then we put this cover on to keep the insects off
'cause it's summertime,
and they could make quite a mess of the brassicas.
And I've not taken the cover off since then,
so this bed has not been weeded in all that time.
So this gives you an idea of the amount of weed growth
that happens or would happen at Homeacres
if we didn't do any weeding at all.
And there are some, they aren't many.
But if I take the cover off, you can have a better look.
And what I find is that the most useful and easiest way
to control weeds is by catching them small.
So for me, the weeds here
are already a little bit on the big side,
but very approachable.
So for example, this, as you can see, is a dandelion.
And this has been the most common weed here this summer
because of lots of seeds blowing in
from the neighbouring fields and edges of the garden.
And then we had a rain in June,
and that germinated all these dandelion seeds.
If I left that another two or three weeks,
this taproot will start to get much longer
and quite tenacious,
and then it's more difficult to pull it out,
and there's a chance that some of it might stay there
and then the weed regrows
because this is a perennial weed.
So it's good to understand the difference between those two,
but perennial weeds, if you see them growing from seed,
just be on it, don't hang around.
Docks, dandelions, even couch grass will generate from seed
if it's been allowed to do that.
So they're a bit more difficult potentially,
but if you catch them small, you know, this is it,
it's attuning your eyes to see them small.
So there's even more, more little one,
and that was really easy to pull out, another dandelion.
And then here we have two actually,
which have both come from my own work.
That's physalis, which I grew just there last year
and didn't pick all the fruits,
so there were some berries which had their seeds in there,
very viable seeds.
And I don't want the physalis there,
so I'm pulling that out.
But that's again, quite a big weed.
And this one I have a lot of
because it's a lovely flower called verbena bonariensis
and to have the flowers,
some of them go to seed that while they're flowering,
so a by product of that is seeds
that go into my compost heap when we clear the flowers.
And even though my compost heaps get hot,
there's a few always that survive,
so I see a few of them dotted around.
So here my approach to weeding this bed
would be just hand weeding.
There are not many, but I'll do it.
I'm not going to wait for these weeds
to do anything else like going to seed.
That would be the worst thing
'cause that makes potentially a lot more weeds.
They pull out really easily from surface mulches.
This is homemade compost here on top.
We haven't put any more compost on since December,
so it had a crop of broad beans first
and we kept them well weeded, which again, didn't take long.
You know, I reckon for this whole length of this bed,
which is pretty long,
it's well over 20 metres or 70 feet or so.
We probably spent about half an hour
weeding this bed of broad beans,
you know, right the way through from December to June.
And then when clearing them, there were hardly any weeds,
we just needed to cut off the beans at ground level.
That was job done, ground prepared, and start weeding.
And yeah, I've got my bucket.
The compost bucket, I call it.
So any old bucket or whatever apparatus you like,
but something to have as your companion.
I've often got this with me when going through the garden,
because often I'm seeing weeds.
I mean, not a lot, but just enough to be worth pulling out
and this is one that is definitely worth keeping an eye on,
grasses, because they have very tenacious root systems.
And so again, really worth catching small
before they get too established.
And I'm looking at weeds in the path as much as in the bed,
because if you get weedy paths and then weeds go to seed
and then that fills your bed with weed seeds
or the weed spread in if it's perennial weeds.
So for me, the approach to weeds is clean everywhere,
paths as well as beds.
And paths are much easier than I think people realise
because they've got led down the very misleading path
of using membrane and they think the membrane
will sort it out, put a bit of wood chip on top,
yeah, that looks nice, walk away kind of thing,
but it's that walking away bit,
it's not staying involved
and thinking that your material you put down
is gonna do the job for you.
You still gotta do a bit,
and if you let weeds grow in any surface mulch
or a bit of soil only on top of a membrane,
they will we root through it and kind of anchor it
all in place and then carry on growing very happily.
And before you know it, that membrane disappears.
Literally it's like archaeological ruins
that then have to be excavated.
You know things sink into the ground
because you've always got stuff landing on top,
like leaves and debris,
and then you've got earthworms throwing casts up
even through the membrane.
And so they go into the ground
and I've heard of people taking over allotments
where they've had to dig it out 'cause it's in there
and it's actually a pollution then.
So do be careful of using membranes like that.
You don't need them.
I'm not using anything like that here.
I've not used any cardboard here for years.
You know, the cardboard is a one-off.
Do check my other videos
for how to clear ground of weeds like that.
You could turn that into beds using cardboard and compost,
but ongoing you do not need to use cardboard at all
when you are simply and easily on top of weeds through it.
An example, asparagus.
So I've got an asparagus patch over there
where, again, I spend really very little time weeding.
This garden would just not be viable
if I had what I would call the normal amount of weeds,
but you can do this.
You can have as few weeds as this
and then enjoy your gardening much more.
And with the paths,
you want to be reasonably on top of the weeds also
because sometimes you'll get crops like up there,
I've got a bed of onions next to a bed of parsnips
and they're both quite tall and vigorous at the moment
and spreading over the path.
And if they were weeds going to seed
in the path under those leaves,
it would be very difficult to deal with them.
And of course you might think,
well, what does that matter a few weeds going to seed,
it's not affecting the onions and parsnips,
they're still gonna grow.
Well, yeah, sure, that's true.
But it's the subsequent result and the extra work
that's going to give you,
that's what you've gotta be thinking about.
In gardening, you always want to be thinking ahead,
like everything you do and everything that happens
has consequences and weeds definitely have consequences
and most of them you don't want.
So keeping on top of weeds full time really helps.
Again, there is a bed of carrots,
which I sowed over a month ago
and I've seen how many people struggle with carrots
'cause they're tiny little seeds
that grow very slowly at first.
It's 10 days between sewing a carrot
and seeing the first leaf.
A lot of weeds can happen
if you've got weedy soil in that time,
and then you lose your carrots
or you spend a long time finding them again,
pulling out all the weeds.
And up there, it's probably five minutes I should think
for quite a substantial run of three lines of carrots.
Just really easy.
You can do that and I'm just gonna get my hoe to show you
one more thing about what you can do to control
because all I've said so far is hand weeding,
which is definitely your main approach.
But particularly if you're starting from weedy ground
and like here's two little seedlings together
and I'm just going to run my hoe through them.
Using a hoe is about tickling the surface.
It's not hard work or hacking or any of that kind of job,
you know, and you're not really disturbing the soil,
you're just running through,
in this case, the compost mulch,
also we've put a bit of wood chip on the paths,
just tickling it like that.
And when the weeds are small,
that means that they get cut or dislodged,
and then on any reasonably dry day, like this is mid-July,
so they're certainly dry, it's quite not gonna rain,
by the afternoon that'll be history
and you don't need to put it in the bucket.
You know, that's just a time-saving tip for you.
So if you've got a lot of little weed seedlings,
using a hoe, this swivel oscillating hoe's a really nice one
'cause it's very thin blade
and you can use it one handed even
when you've got the lovely soft surface mulch like this.
So hoeing is useful resource.
I'm finding here though,
I actually use this very little
because we have so few weeds.
I mainly use it in the spring
after spreading compost mulches in the winter
if there's some weed seeds in the compost
and I think I've more or less covered it.
There's obviously more one can say about weeds,
but the golden rule is to catch them small,
don't let them go to seed,
and disturb the soil as little as possible, feed it,
and you can then enjoy your gardening so much more.
(gentle music)