Weeding is an essential tasks in any vegetable garden.
There are lots of methods and approaches to managing a garden
that can greatly reduce or increase the amount of weeding that needs to be done.
But it isn’t a task that can be eliminated as there are always going to be at least
a few plants growing where you don’t want them to.
I have used many different types of tools to help with weeding, depending on the type of weed,
how old or established the plants are and of course the context or
method used in the particular garden. A few years ago I started experimenting
with using a simple piece of bent wire with a section flattened with a hammer.
And this simple diy tool has become our favourite, the tool that we most commonly use in the gardens.
This simple tool that we make ourselves is not useful for all situations,
and the fact that we use it so much has more to do with how developed the gardens
are after a lot of work, and because of our general approach of weeding very frequently.
For many years this tool would not have been so useful,
especially when the growing spaces were first being established,
usually taking over rough ground with lots of mature perennial and pernicious weeds.
Scutch or couch grass is widespread in the area where the gardens have been established,
and there also have been pockets of bindweed, as well as a fair amount of creeping thistle.
These are all hard weeds to deal with, and we usually dig the rhizome and creeping root
network out where we can, coming back later to dig or pull out any shoots that reappear,
a task that typically needs to be done many times over several months or even years.
And we have also used ground cover fabric, cardboard or some other covering,
though this can also take quite a while, and rarely is 100% effective,
even when we are very careful with the covering. With the ubiquitous dandelion and dock plants,
which have deep tap roots, we usually end up just digging them out or putting a flat
rock over the plant until it dies off. So with all of these and other perennial
weeds we either dig them out or cover them up to get rid of them.
I have tried the chop-and-drop approach in the past a few times but I often found
that I let these plants go to seed, allowing them to disperse seeds across the gardens,
creating even more weeding in the future.
Over the years I have inadvertently added a lot of weed seeds to the gardens,
from weeds and crops that I let go to seed in the gardens,
to seeds that survived the composting process and I spread back onto the gardens in the compost,
and the seeds that blow into the gardens from the surrounding landscape every season.
And all of this has been added to the significant bank of weed seed
that had built up in the soil over many seasons before I even started the gardens.
I have become a lot better at keeping most of these undesirable seeds out of the gardens,
and by using no-till methods on some of the growing spaces I am able to prevent
bringing up a fresh load of these seeds from deeper in the soil to germinate.
And in the gardens that I still cultivate, the seed bank has been
gradually diminishing with each passing season. But for quite a few years I had to deal with a
large flush of annual weed seedlings in the spring or whenever I prepared a bed.
For these smaller weeds, I have relied on a lot of hand weeding and flame weeding empty beds,
but my favourite tool for dealing with them used to be the oscillating hoe.
This is essentially a double edged blade on the end of a long handle, that adjusted when
dragged back and forth over the soil, so that the blade was drawn just below the surface,
slicing the small weeds off at their roots. This will kill most small annual weeds,
with one pass, though if the blade isn’t sharp enough it tended to simply drag the whole seedling
to another location, essentially transplanting it, often requiring another pass later onto kill it.
I also have used this tool quite a bit with larger weeds, and even when killing
off a green manure and it seems to be able to withstand considerable force.
We still use this oscillating hoe a lot, as it is very useful for weeding full beds and between long
rows of crops before they become established. It is also a good tool to use for spot weeding
quickly while walking through the garden, because we don’t have to bend down so much.
But most of the weeding we do these days is with a smaller hand made version of a wire weeder.
I had first read about the possibility of using a simple bent wire to weed in
the gardens a long time ago, but I only just started trying it a few years ago.
In its simplest form it is just a piece of thick wire, bent at one end to make some form
of a handle, and bent at the other end so that the wire can be dragged parallel to the ground along
the surface of the soil, or just beneath it. If the surface of the soil is fairly loose,
or at least does not have a firm cap, and the weed seedlings are very small,
this simple wire can harass and disrupt the weeds enough to cause many of them to dry out and die.
These bent wires are especially useful for running down the edge of a row of lettuce and other leafy
greens, where the end of the wire can slide underneath the leaves without damaging them,
disrupting any weeds that may have sprouted. And this wire tool can be attached to a stick
or long handle, which would allow it to be used while standing, though this is something
that we have not got around to trying yet. There are manufactured versions of this type
of wire weeder available for purchase, which are designed specifically for
the task and are apparently becoming quite popular with market gardeners.
I preferred to flatten the part of the wire that is in contact with the soil,
so that it requires less force to drag it through the soil, and is more likely to cut
through the roots or stem of the small seedlings, rather than just dragging them to a new location.
I have been doing this by simply hammering the end of the wire repeatedly with a
hammer against anything solid enough, I’ve used an anvil, a sledge hammer,
a mallet or even a peening anvil for my scythe It can be a bit tricky to keep it straight,
and no doubt there are easier and more effective ways to do this, which would
be useful if I was making a lot of them, but I find even a roughly flattened section is useful.
Then I bend the wire to make one end easier to grip and so that the flat part can run
parallel to the ground when using it. The angles that I bend it to depends on
how high or low I want to hold the wire, which depends on the crop or situation.
For weeding in between tall crops like onions, I tend to want to hold the tool more vertically,
so I would bend the flattened part to be more perpendicular to the handle.
Using this simple tool to weed under larger plants like potatoes, I find it useful to
hold the wire more horizontally, with the flattened end more in line with the handle.
But in general I find about a 45º angle to be most useful in most situations,
and tend to leave it like that.
As with many tools that I use in the gardens,
I find that a sharper edge often makes the task easier and more effective.
So I have been sharpening the edge of these wire weeders with a file which can be tricky
without a vice or something else to firmly hold the wire, and it helps to have a sharp file.
I have found that for most work the edge doesn’t have to be really sharp, but the stony soil that
we have around here will definitely dull the edge, so I try to file it sharp again every so often.
And it does depend on how hard or soft the metal in the original wire is to begin with,
as the harder the metal is, the longer the edge will last.
But apparently the hammering will harden the metal even more, making it more durable,
and allow it to stay sharper for longer. I have also used the peening hammer and
an anvil that I use to draw out an edge on my scythe to produce an edge on the wire,
and although I don’t have the skill to produce an even edge this way it is still quite effective.
And I have found that the careful use of an angle
grinder with a flap disk can grind a suitable edge really quickly.
The first few wire weeders that I made were with the reasonably thin wire that I had on
hand at the time, which wasn’t strong enough as a single wire to work well, so I simply
doubled up the wire, winding it around itself to produce a hooped section to be flattened.
This works well for around some plants, as it reduces the risk of cutting the plant,
but it doesn’t work well for getting under the leaves.
I now prefer a simple hook fashioned out of a thicker wire, as it is more
versatile for using around leafy crops. And I have found that a metal wire handle
from the plastic buckets that we have are perfect for making these tools.
I got a load of these recycled buckets years ago and they have been very useful in the gardens,
but the plastic doesn’t last forever, and I have been collecting a number
of handles, not knowing what to do with them. But now I turn most of them into wire weeders.
The metal seems quite hard, and the wire is thick enough to need a pair of pliers to
bend it effectively, and it takes a lot of hammering to produce the flat part,
but the resulting weeder works really well. I like leaving the little knob on the end
as it helps to keep the sharpened edge from the base of the plants,
and the plastic handle piece can still be used, making the tool more comfortable to hold onto.
The design of these tools has evolved quite a bit, and will likely continue to change.
I really like that I can adjust them when needed, or that I can create different ones with different
shapes, lengths and angles to suit the diverse range of crops and contexts in the gardens.
And they are essentially free, taking only a bit of time,
limited skill and some common tools to create. I really like that I can leave these wire
weeders in different parts of the gardens so that there is usually one close by to be able to use,
unlike all the other tools which we need to keep locked away in a more secure location,
which actually makes them less useful. They are also light and easy to carry,
or to hang on the edge of a bucket or bin so that we can use them whenever a bit of
weeding needs to be done when we are in the gardens harvesting or doing other tasks.
Because we have already gotten rid of most of the pernicious and perennial weeds from most of the
growing spaces, we mostly have to deal with the annual weeds from seeds that recently germinated.
And we also are trying to maintain a routine of weeding very frequently once a week or two,
which means that most of the weeds that we deal with are still quite small.
And with a lot of the growing spaces being managed with minimal tillage,
it tends to be only new weeds seeds that are blown in that need to be dealt with.
And as the seed bank in the soil is gradually depleted we no longer have to deal with a huge
flush of weed seedlings where we do till the soil. There are still some patches of perennial weeds,
but they are quite weak, and the growing shoots that appear can
usually be cut back with a sharp wire weeder. If we were growing long beds of similar crops,
then a purpose built tool with a long handle would probably be a lot more useful.
But because we grow smaller batches of wide range of crops, I find a shorter and more manoeuvrable
tool is a lot more useful for getting in and round all of the different types of plants.
So most of the weeding that we do is frequent spot weeding of seedlings and small plants,
often while we are in the gardens doing other tasks,
which these wire weeder are really good for. The fact that we can make these tools ourselves,
out of old bucket handles that are just lying around, is a real bonus,
and I am intrigued how the design of these tools will continue to evolve in the future.