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Anne’s Take: The War On Weeds
Weeds…no one likes them and we don’t want to talk about them. No matter what beautiful flowers we are proudly growing, somewhere else there’s a patch of weeds laughing and hissing at us while taking over another section of the garden or the field. Scrolling through the Instagram feeds of my favorite flower farmers and gardeners, apparently, weeds only exist on my farm.
In my first years of flower farming, each season I declared I would win the war on weeds. This occurred at the beginning of the year when nothing was growing, right after we’d made our first planting beds of the season. But by late July I’d lost entire beds to weeds, losing flowers and potential sales revenue.
Lisa says, “Preventing weeds from developing is the key to less chores.”
Notice what Lisa says here: less chores. Not eradicating weeds, not winning the war on weeds but less chores. When it comes to managing weeds in a garden or on a flower farm, systems and attitude are everything. To do this you need to build a weed management system from start to finish that successfully carries you through the season.
A weed management system starts in the planning stages when you are determining how you will build the beds in your garden and on your farm. To prepare a brand new planting area, you can use silage tarps to kill weeds, start a new garden spot, and end cover crops. Don’t forget to use anchor bags to secure them – rocks or bricks will tear them. For flowers that prefer to be directly seeded into the ground, you should be planting your seeds on the day you build your beds. If you are transplanting plants into beds, use Bio360 Biodegradable Mulch when building these beds to help with weed suppression.
Now, let’s talk about attitude: I’ve got the worst one when it comes to weeds! I don’t have time, it’s a mundane task and frankly, I’m too important to pull weeds (insert laugh here). One week, while complaining that I had no time to weed, my weekly social media screen time report popped up on my phone… enough said!
The next day I committed to trying a new plan: I would do one hour of weeding five days a week. I would weed and do nothing else but focus on weeding for one hour. No phone, no stopping to text or answer texts, no headphones connected to my phone listening to podcasts or music while I weeded, and no talking to anyone while weeding. I would do nothing but weed for one single hour, five days a week. The results are in: there’s plenty of time to weed if done with the right attitude, the right tools, and using the right techniques. I could not believe what a single hour of focused weeding did for our farm!
Learning how to properly use these tools with a good attitude – now you’ve got a winning formula to deal with weeds all season long! Tools are nothing if you’re not using them. For every tool sold on TGW’s site, Lisa has created a video showing how to use them properly. You don’t win the war on weeds – you create a winning system to manage them.
Lisa says she never walks her field without having her shears and pouch clipped to her hip. With this in mind, I set up a system to have all my TGW weeding tools in one place, ready to use at a moment’s notice. I got an old bucket and in it went my Japanese hand hoe, nitrile gloves, and other tools I already had. I set the bucket on my front porch along with my Stand-up Garden hoe, ready to go at any time to the field.
Now I’m unstoppable! When I walk the beds in the evening with my dog, Maggie my hoe and bucket of tools come along with us (and my shears and pouch clipped on my hip). When I’m ready to plant my weekly succession of sunflowers, my bucket of weeding tools and hoe go with me in case I see weeds getting out of control. Time to mow pathways? Along come my weed tool bucket and hoe in the back of the truck with the lawn mower and weed eater. Pounding stakes and installing floral netting? My weed bucket and hoe were nearby to remove weeds if needed.
Weed management is a mindset. This means some planning before you’ve planted the first seed and having the right tools on hand. Create a winning formula with a system along with the right attitude, and you’ve got what it takes to grow a successful garden and flower farm business this season and beyond!
To learn more check out Lisa’s past blogs about weeds and systems to manage them:
About The Author: Anne Morgan is our Customer Service Coordinator at The Gardener’s Workshop and the head grower at Franklin Flower Farm in Macon County, NC. Anne can be reached at [email protected].
