How to choke weeds out of your garden
 (Read 500+ times)
By Jared Garrett
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Getting rid of weeds in your garden is often a matter of soil cultivation and diligence. However, what is good news is that to completely eliminate weeds, you don't actually need to bend over for hours every day pulling at the little nasties. In addition to taking good care of your garden soil, there is another, quite simple approach to getting rid of weeds. You can choke them out.
That's right. Weeds are usually the chokers, not the chokees. They will find any bare patch in your garden and poke their awful heads up. Then, before you know it, they will be taking over the neighborhood.
So you must turn the tables. There are basically two approaches to choking out weeds: ground cover and spreading plants.
GROUND COVER
This option is best used in a flower garden that is not necessarily very full. For example, if you have a garden that has perennials with a lot of spacing between them, you might try ground cover. Some folks swear by weed cloth, but I think it looks nasty. It works well, but who wants some black cloth poking out of their garden? Not me.
I use bark and mulch. I need to make sure that the mulch is high quality and does not contain weed seeds, so I make my own. I spread this stuff around the base of my irises, ranunculus and petunias. And I hardly ever have weeds. Why? Because they have nowhere to grow. Furthermore, seeds pods that land on the bark don't get a chance to germinate!
SPREADING PLANTS
These spreading plants are usually quite low to the ground. My favorite spreading plant is creeping flox. The species I love best is the one with bright pink buds. This stuff will spread as far as you let it, but will easily handle being cut back. It buds ubiquitously, and the flowers are lovely. Basically you have a gorgeous carpet of simple, four-petaled flowers. And the weeds are history.
Some other suggestions for spreading plants are: bugle, bergenias (elephant ears), geraniums, and the self-spreading herbs like Italian oregano and golden marjoram.
So just remember to cover up the ground and to not allow those weeds any chance of growing. Thus, the weeds will be choked and your back will be saved.
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Author Bio Box: Jared Garrett
 http://www.helium.com/user/show/45690
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