Weed Control. How to start a native garden.
Before
Plan for weeds. Protect your plants from weeds. Control the weeds.
After
1. There are more of them than there are of you. Billions of weeds, cascading from the neighbors, their dogs, and their 'landscaping'.
2. For every weed you allow to set seed you will have thousands more weeds.
3. The right mulch, full weed control, and the right plants in the right places are the easiest long term weed solutions in most 'normal' landscape situations. Weeds will fill a vacuum (open niche). Fields are not empty. Your native garden needs to be full of natives.
4.Water
the garden as little you can. Weeds need moist ground to
germinate, do not give it to them! Make the plants lean and mean!
5. DON'T FERTILIZE the garden! It makes really big monster weeds.
6. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SPRAY the weeds! (Read and follow the label directions). If the only weeds are grasses, check out Fusilade (and read the label). It can usually go right over most non-grass natives. Preemergents such as Surflan or Ronstar sometimes work better, but you have to put it down before the weeds germinate. Again follow the labels and remember cultivation favors weeds. Native gardens need a lot of help at first, after a few year the garden will become very stable, no weeds.
7.
Weed, Weed, Weed! Mulch, Mulch, Mulch! It takes about 3 years,
getting better each year, if you stay up with it. We have sites
that it took only a year before they were weed free, with birds
and wildflowers showing up for the party.
8. Mulch provides cover for the little animals and insects (that's good, not bad) that like to eat weed seeds. gophers hate mulch (it seems to confuse them). Do not leave the ground bare if possible(except in deserts(including coastal dunes), and true grasslands (shallow soils); in these situations spot boulders next to plants).
9.Clear
plastic is being used to sterilize the soil with solar heat. This
has worked well against Castor bean (thanks Brian). It dose a
great job of killing most everything in the soil. Including the
good guys that help suppress weeds. So the next year you have huge
juice weeds. definitely don't put it around already established
plants it will cook them too. If it doesn't burn the roots off, it
will suffocate them. Putting the plastic down with bark or chips
has been the pits! After a few years the bark breaks down and the
plastic is exposed, the plastic breaks down and peels back. So,
use the plastic if you like a yard of weeds, plastic pieces that
look like shredded garbage bags, with unhappy plants in it. Unless
you need to hide the blocks under your car, forget the plastic and
use more mulch.
10. Plastic Landscape fabric has been a disaster in many sites. This stuff seems to love weeds. The weeds actually grow on top of the plastic. We've had a full crop on ours in the nursery inside of a year. The soil-mulch interface is where a number of the soil building, root activities, and weed suppression occur. Putting plastic in this interface is stupid. I cannot understand how plastic landscape fabric can fit into an ecosystem. Weeds are not bothered by it, good plants are.
Step back and LOOK at your weed control.
After you've worked on an area, step back and look, are the weeds coming right back? Do you have openings that are allowing the weeds to get footholds? Is there a six foot weed in the back bed that can seed your yard and your neighbors? Is the area fully planted? (Preferably with native plants from the area.)
Gophers?
Ground Squirrells? Bait and/or trap (bomb and blast?), control
them! They're little weed spreaders.
Water system OK? Leaks feed weeds. Drip irrigation favors weeds. Frequent watering nurtures weeds.
Work real hard to make the area look like a dream park. In about three years it will.