Not sure weed prevention is neccessary in your organic garden? Let me take that delusion away from you…

Why is it that as soon as you have spot in your garden where nothing is planted and the soil is bare, you just have to turn your back to it for a few seconds and BANG it’s full of sprouting weeds? There are two answers to that.

Evolution and your gardening efforts.

First, evolution creates different kinds of strategies for plants to spread their seeds and thereby their genes. One is to spread a lot of seeds, practically bombarding the surroundings with them. That way as soon as there is a bare spot (aha!) of soil these seeds are there ready to sprout, and they do it real fast in order to take advantage of this opportunity to grow, mature and spread more seeds! This is the reason for the fact that there is always seeds in the soil ready to sprout at first chance.

Second, you enrich the soil in your garden with all kinds of nutrients and organic matter to prepare the soil for your plants and give them the best growing conditions. But you do not only create good conditions for your vegetables and flowers, but for the weeds as well! They can grow even faster and spread even more seeds, doing their best to out-manoeuvre your own precious plants.

To counterpart this you need a strategy of your own, and this is where you need to pay attention!

There are a few different ways to avoid that your plants get suffocated by the unwanted ones.

First, when you prepare your soil and dig, dig, dig, (or use a tiller if your garden is to big to just dig by hand) make sure you also remove all the perennial weeds such as dandelion, horse tail and thistle. Don’t think they will die when you bury them in the soil, they won’t!

Second, when winter is over (if you have winter where you live) hurry out into your garden and remove the first tiny weed plants. That will save you a lot of work later on.

Third, loosen the soil between the plants in your vegetable and flower beds once in a while, that will disturb the sprouting weeds and prevent them from growing.

Fourth, and this is my personal favourite, cover the soil in your beds, between your growing vegetables and flowers. This will have multiple positive effects.

Being the focus of this article, it will of course work as excellent weed prevention, but it will also keep the soil uncompact and moist. And furthermore, if you use for example grass, straw or other vegetable residue, it will add nutrients to the soil as the cover decomposes.

Fifth, and last, you can cover your crop with a fiber cloth, but you have to do that right from the start when you sow your plants. if you wait many weed seeds will have landed on the soil, and will germinate and grow quite well under the cloth!

This method also have other benefits than weed prevention, because it will create a green house-like environment for your precious plants, as well as keeping a number of pests away from them.

Remember though, that you always have to check your crops for weeds, and uproot them as soon as you spot them.