Waging war on weeds

By Rennie Phillips

In Missouri where we live our weather has gone from cool in April and the first part of May to hot. Our days have been getting up to 90 degrees or so with nights down to about 70 with a good dose of humidity. Makes for a very sweaty day to say the least. We have also been getting quite a bit of rain off and on. It will get dry for a week or so and then rain for a week or so. I like the rain but at the same time it causes problems.

With all the moisture, the weeds and the bugs seem to grow by leaps and bounds. I wish the garden stuff grew like weeds but it seems like the weeds outgrow the garden goodies. I have a fairly large garden so I take on the weeds in different ways. I have started to grow in plastic mulch when I can. I make a kind of raised bed about two feet wide. I then lay down a dripper hose the length of the bed and cover that with a three foot wide piece of real thin plastic mulch. I cover both sides of the mulch with some soil and then plant through the mulch. No weeds up against the plants.

But there are weeds and grass that grow in between the beds. I hoe off some of the weeds but there is just too much to hoe so I till some of it. I till up close to the plastic mulch but there is a three or four inch piece of soil up against the bed that I can't till. So I hoe some but some of it I take my weed eater to. It gets kind of dirty but I weed eat right down to the soil along the sides of the bed. This will last for several weeks. Works pretty good. If you are working around tomatoes be careful not to stir up the dust and get it on the tomatoes. The dirt will sure cause disease on your tomatoes.

One of the benefits of growing through plastic mulch and also watering with a dripper line is I water right up against the plant but I don't water in between the rows, so all the moisture is on the plant but not in between. Helps cut down on the amount of water we use but it also helps cut down on the amount of weeds and grass in between the rows. The initial cost is more to have a dripper system but I think the amount of water will eventually pay for the difference.

On some crops, like beans, I try to mulch along them with straw or paper and straw. For years I used old newspapers and still do some. I end up with a bunch of paper feed sacks from the feed store so I've been using them. I also use some rolls of paper from the paint store. They have 3x150 foot rolls of paper that are meant for runners when painting or such. Some of the time I want a one-foot-wide piece of paper so I simply saw off one foot. I lay the paper along the row of beans and cover with straw or wood chips or sawdust. This does a really good job. It takes a little more work and time but weeding takes time and work.

As the heat grows start watching for bugs in your garden. Sometime in June you will start having tomato worms or caterpillars. One kind likes to eat the new tender leaves right at the top of your tomato plant. The worms start small but in time they may get to almost three inches long by 3/8 to 1/2 inch in diameter. You can pick them off and squish them but they are really hard to find. I spray my tomatoes with BT. Really safe and totally harmless to pets and humans but it really does a job on worms. Use this BT or dipel dust on your cabbage and such as well. One other worm likes to bore in the top of the tomato right by the stem. You will hardly see any damage until your tomato goes bad and is worthless. The BT will work on them as well. I powder my cabbage and such with BT but I mix BT in my sprayer and spray my tomatoes.

One thing that helps with weeds and grass is to grow as many of your vining crops vertically on a fence or trellis or such. I've grown cantaloupe on a cattle panel. Most of the fruit will be on the ground. The fruit that was up on the fence will need some support so I built little pads to set them on. Worked really fine. All my cucumbers grow on a fence. I use a lot of 16 foot cattle panels and hang them on T posts. I buy the heavier plastic baler twine and use it to tie the fence to the post. The baler twine is cheap and easy to use.

If at all possible try to keep your weeds and grass from going to seed. I know there are times when circumstances will make it impossible to keep a weed free garden but at the same time work on keeping the plants from seeding. In the past I would keep my rows wide enough I could mow in between them. It worked. A friend of mine says she lays down sheets of cardboard, weights it down with a brick and smothers out the weeds and such. Some lay down old carpet runners and this works. I've seen some lay down boards along their rows and cut down on weeds right by the plants.

However you handle the weeds will determine how big your garden should be. You can plant a huge garden but it will produce very little if you can't keep it relatively weed free. A smaller garden that is weed free will produce a lot of goodies.

Just my two cents worth and how I do it. If you have better ways or advice I'd like to hear from you.