Weed control. What a downside to gardening and landscaping! The hours of time it can consume, and money, is a real downer. Being a tall guy seems to make it just that much more difficult to do weeding by hand. Bending way over to the ground is strenuous. If I go down to my knees to weed, getting up and down to change location seems strenuous also. I've also had head rushes when getting up too quickly! When doing heavy weeding on my knees I've found knee pads or a cushion on the ground to put my knees on helps comfort tremendously.
This year I will be trying out a Kana hoe for the first time to see if that makes hand weeding go more quickly and easily. Thank-you to posters in the
garden gadget thread for tipping me on to this type of tool. Hopeful it will help.
I mulch most beds with hardwood tree bark mulch that I purchase and get delivered in fairly large quantities every year. I add about 1-3 inches to the beds. That definitely keeps weeds down some. Then I usually apply Preen weed preventer a couple times a year and that really helps a lot.
Seems like no matter what weeds still need to be pulled. I find clover will always come back if you hand pull it, so I do use RoundUp on that when I see it. I try to minimize use of RoundUp, but I also do use it occasionally on patches of grass that similarly always come back after being hand-pulled.
I walk around my landscape and seedling beds a lot, often multiple times per day, and find that spending just a few minutes of "casual" weeding during those visits adds up and helps keep weeds from getting out of hand (but not always).
I am also experimenting in one bed with letting wild strawberries run free around the daylilies. I do think it looks good, the question is will they suppress weeds…
