Getting weeds out of your garden takes perseverance and a variety of strategies, including the following:

• Pull ’em out. If they don’t contain seeds, add them to your compost.
• Eat them up. Many weeds are edible and nutritious.
• Mulch. Cick here for a detailed discussion of mulch.
• Change the environment. Some weeds prefer certain soil and sun conditions and fail to thrive when deprived of their ideal situation.
• Give them competition. Plant more desirable plants that grow faster and stronger than the weeds do.
• Burn them up. Use clear plastic to heat up the soil and kill the seeds or use a weed flamer to shrivel the young plants.
• Use chemical warfare. As a last resort, use herbicides.

Many weeds are actually symptoms of another underlying problem with your soil or gardening practices. For example, some weeds show up in poorly drained soil; others in overly acidic or alkaline soil. For more on this topic, look for Weeds and What They Tell by Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer (Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association). Written nearly 50 years ago, some of its information is out of date, but the book remains unique and useful.

Solarization

One of the niftiest ways to beat the weeds in a new garden is to solarize them. The concept is simple: Capture the sun’s heat under a sheet of clear plastic and literally bake the weeds and waiting seeds to death. This technique takes several weeks in warm, sunny climates. If you garden in a cool, cloudy climate, try it during the warmest or sunniest times of year and allow up to eight weeks for the process to work.

Here’s how to solarize the weeds in your garden:

1. Mow closely or till the ground to remove as much of the existing vegetation as you can.
   
   Solarization works best on bare ground.
2. Dampen the soil.
   
   Moisture helps speed the process.
3. Spread and tautly stretch a sheet of heavy-gauge clear plastic over the area, as shown in the image below, anchoring it with stones.

   

4. Seal the edge of the plastic to hold in the heat by covering it all the way around with soil or boards.

Avoid tilling the soil after solarization or you may bring new seeds to the surface.  ....read more