Winning Against Weeds

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Mulching works well for transplants, but it’s not a great option for direct seeding. That’s because you can mulch both sides of a newly planted seed row, but that won’t prevent weeds from popping up in the row itself — often appearing even before the seeds you’ve planted.

Corn gluten. If you don’t have mulch or the time to apply it, consider corn gluten. This nontoxic, plant-based herbicide is a byproduct of corn processing that kills germinating seeds and also provides a source of nitrogen. You can’t use corn gluten with direct-seeded crops, because it may kill the seeds, but it’s a good option for transplants. You can buy corn gluten products from garden supply companies. Organic growers should be aware that corn gluten may contain genetically modified corn.

Stale seed beds.“Stale-bedding” is a good option for direct-seeded crops. You let a garden bed go stale the same way you let bread go stale: by just letting it sit there. The idea is to get out of the way all the soil disturbance needed for preparing a seed bed. Then, water the bed, and when a good crop of weed seedlings emerges, kill them with the least soil disturbance possible, such as with a flame weeder or cultivating hoe.

Your goal is to exhaust the weed seeds in the top inch or so of soil without bringing new seeds to the surface. If you cultivate the soil shallowly, two or three flushes of weeds should be enough to exhaust the weed-seed deposits in the uppermost soil. This approach makes it possible to grow even slow-germinating crops — including many flowers and herbs — with one modest weeding session before they reach a size that makes mulching practical.

Flame weeding. I like to flame my stale beds; that way, I’m not disturbing the soil at all, and I don’t bring new weed seeds to the surface. I also plant a bit of my crop seed a couple of days before I seed the entire bed. When the first seed germinates, I know I can flame the bed one last time — just before my main crop emerges. This final flaming ensures that any weeds will begin on the same footing as my crop, rather than way ahead of it.

Cultivating tools. As soon as the crop is up, I switch to cultivating tools. My favorites are the lightweight Winged Weeder (see photo) and the Garden Weasel, which has wheels with prongs that make it easy to turn up the soil. Like many cultivating hoes, these tools work on the principle of getting the weeds when they’re small — ideally in their infancy.

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