It’s that time of year…garden prep time. I tend to ignore the garden December- February…for multiple reasons. Busy with the holidays, it’s cold (okay, not freezing, but hey, I am a Southern California Girl…50 is cold), and most of the plants are dormant, meaning no active growth. As the weather warms a bit (or sometimes blazes up to 90F..eek, this month has been nuts right?), the plants are waking up… and so are the weeds.

I have learned that if I take the time now, I will definitely have a lot less weeding to do as my vegetables and selected flower plants grow. The garden will never be “weed free” but there are definitely ways to reduce the amount of unwanted plants. There is no magic secret to removing unwanted plants. Sure, there are plenty of products on the market designed to kill them down to the root. However, if you are like me, I really avoid putting poison in my garden. 1. We eat most of the stuff I grow and 2. I definitely let my kids and dog play out there…Poison is a no go. So…the alternative is a lot of work.

Not what you wanted to read? Okay, fair enough, but if you are strategic, it isn’t too bad (besides, pulling weeds can be a great workout 😉 ).

The first tip I can offer is time of year. After the coldest part of your winter (in my case, this is February/ March), it is time to prep your garden before you plant your seeds or seedlings. I aim to be ready to plant by Mid-March. This involves pruning year-round plants and removing unwanted ones.

My biggest garden enemy is crab grass. This stuff is the absolute worst! The root systems are amazing and really are impossible to remove forever (especially if your neighbors have it in their gardens/ lawns). The only success I have had to limit the growth of the crab grass is to pull it out by its roots. I have tried pouring boiling water, blocking out light with black garden fabric…temporary fixes. Well…in truth they are all temporary fixes, but pulling out the roots seems to be the most lasting for me. I have learned that once the grass is actively growing, pulling can be even harder to do. At this time of year, most of the grass is dormant. Don’t be fooled by its brown dead looking color…all of that will come right back and take over. While the grass is dormant, it is much easier to remove…it pulls out of the ground with a lot less physical effort.

This is the tedious part (but again, worth it!). Put on your sunhat, some good music and get to digging and pulling.

I used to skip this step…after all you can’t see too much crabgrass in this image below right?

If I leave it and don’t take the time to do this process, I enter into a full battle for the remainder of the growing season. And in past years I end up giving up and the grass just kind of takes over. This is not only problematic for that growing season but also a LOT more work for the next year’s prep. I have definitely noticed less that I have needed to pull out this year since taking the time last year to pull out as much as I could.

After I spend a few sessions of pulling the roots, I am ready to plant and of course mulch. You have two powerful tools against the weeds…pulling by the root and limiting their sunlight with mulch. I am fairly new to mulch so I won’t go much into that today. But I have read from many other gardener’s blogs that mulch is a powerful tool!

Will there still be survivors that pop through..of course! But they are manageable and should not be as big of a nuisance to remove as your plants grow. So, I think one more session and I should be ready to put some plants in the ground! Until next time…

Happy Gardening!

Lauren