Growing a vegetable garden can be filled with many wonderful moments, such as your seed sprouting or the first sign of a vegetable growing on your plant. But there are some tasks you have to take care of that aren’t as pleasant.
Some of those have to do with pests or a fungus developing on your plant. But one that’s just part of the routine you take on as a gardener is weeding the garden. This allows your vegetable plants to thrive.
Weeds Steal Nutrients
When weeds are present in your garden bed, they’re sucking the nutrients and hydration away from your vegetable plant. You don’t want anything leeching off of your plant. Whether it’s a pesky insect nibbling at the leaves or a weed whose roots are not allowing your garden to succeed.
Thin Your Vegetable Garden Sprouts
The first bit of weeding you’ll be doing, which is the hardest, is thinning out your sprouts. You will usually need to plant more seeds than you’ll use to ensure that space has a sprout that pops up.
But leaving too many sprouts in that place allows the same thing that happens with weeds; two plants competing for the same nutrients. Once you’ve chosen the sprout to leave in place, you’ll want to continually watch for weeds to pop up around it so that you can pull it immediately.
Don't Procrastinate Weeding!
If you wait and procrastinate the task of weeding, that plant will become stronger and will be harder to remove. Some people make the mistake of thinking their plant can survive it, but even if it does, having to harvest a garden with produce tangled up among weeds will be a difficult process for you.
Use the Right Tools to Weed your Vegetable Garden
This is not merely an aesthetic task, to keep your garden looking nice. It needs to be done routinely. Some people avoid it because they have a difficult time getting up and down in their garden.
There are stand-up weeder tools you can buy to make the task much simpler. The best thing about them is that they get to the root of the weed and remove it. If you weed your garden by hand, you have to make sure you’re taking it out down to the root or else it will simply pop right back up and continue leeching off of your garden.
Enjoy your Weed-free Garden
If the weed is growing close to your plants, make sure that you’re carefully removing them and not disturbing the root system of your vegetable plants in the process. As you pull them out, add some mulch to the garden to help prevent more weeds from popping up. And there you have it! A nice weed-free vegetable garden.