7 weed-control basics for the garden

A combination of the right tools, a little elbow grease and some good old ingenuity will usually do the trick to treat weeds. Here are seven basics of weed control that work well.

A weed is any plant — even an ornamental — that grows where you don't want it.

• Common weeds are fast-growing, resilient nuisances that not only make the garden look unsightly but also steal nutrients and light from other plants. What's more, they may host pests and diseases.

If you have weeds, don't automatically reach for the sprayer to treat those on the lawn and in the garden.

Weeds can be annual, biennial or perennial.

• Annuals and biennials reproduce by shedding seeds; a single plant of some weeds can yield more than 40,000 seeds.
• Perennials can spread by roots, stems but also seeds.

So what is the best strategy to controlling weeds?

Weed seeds need light to germinate. Keep the soil around your plants covered with organic mulch, black plastic, layers of wet newspaper or fabric weed barrier to prevent weeds from taking hold in the soil.

Use edging materials like bricks or underground barriers of metal or plastic around garden beds to keep lawn grass and perennial weeds from creeping into flower beds and vegetable plots.

Solarizing the soil means letting the sun do the weeding for you.

• Till the soil and water it.
• Lay a sheet of clear plastic over the area, anchor the edges with stones and wait four to six weeks.
• The sun's heat will help "cook" weed seeds and potentially destroy soil-borne diseases as well.

Don't dig the solarized plot before planting, because cultivating will bring buried weed seeds to the surface.

Cultivate your garden in the fall by working in plenty of compost.

• Rake beds or rows into the shapes you want, then mulch the surface with newspapers topped with straw, chopped leaves or other organic mulch.
• In spring, there will be no weeds to pull and your garden will be ready to plant.

If you're planning a new flower bed, instead of digging out weeds and grass, smother them to death with a piece of old carpeting.

• This method works best during the hottest weeks of summer. Remove the cover in the fall, dig up the bed and it will be ready to plant first thing in spring.

You can toss weeds into the compost pile if they're young and haven't yet bloomed, because they have no seeds that will come back to haunt you next year.

To kill weed seeds, compost needs to heat up to 71°C (170°F) and few heaps ever get that hot.

• One solution is to dispose of weeds in a special compost heap. Then use the finished compost only when amending deep planting holes, where the weed seeds are buried at least 10 centimetres below the soil surface and won't germinate.

Don't let soil remain bare for any length of time, or weeds will move right in — they think that's their job.

• If you remove plants from a bed, blanket the openings with mulch or plant a cover crop or another plant to prevent giving the weeds a "blank canvas" on which to germinate.