Weed 'Early and Often"

Vegetables are better for you if they have been grown without pesticides.  One good way to keep the bugs off our plants is to have clean, weed-free aisles, and garden boxes. 

The secret to weeding is to pull them up when they are tiny.    

This keeps the bugs much further from our plants and makes the garden look well kept.

A two-way hoe also makes weeding easy. It just rakes across the soil and catches the weeds by their roots.  I've only seen this at Ace hardware in Cullman (in the Piggy Wiggy) but the hoe can be order at Growfood.com.  This organization donated one to Hulaco.  

Sometimes it's hard to tell which are the plants that are supposed to be in the garden, and which are the weeds.  We planted the garden in neat rows near the water pipes, everything else is a weed.  The arrow on the left is pointing to weeds in the middle of the box.  Those need to be pulled out.  The arrow on the right is pointing to crabgrass weeds outside the box.  These will try to grow inside the box and choke our plants.  

When crabgrass is about the size of a quarter is the best time to pull it up.   

Crabgrass makes a star shape and is still easy to pull up at this stage.

If crabgrass gets big, it may take a shovel to get it out.  The motto for weeding is "Early and Often".  You can tell it's a weed if it's not growing in a straight line near the water pipes in the garden.  Weeding the garden is easy if it's done just a few minutes each week.  

I hope you have great success with your garden.  To get more inspiration check out the Mittleider Garden group on Facebook or click here to go back.