Killing weeds with chemicals is hopefully becoming a thing of the past, now we realise how much damage they can do. Glyphosate, a common herbicide, has been shown to harm bees and cause cancer, while toxins leaching into the water system are bad for all of us.
Hand-weeding lets us get up close to our garden, but it can be a chore, particularly when we have a lot of weeds to deal with. Some persistent troublemakers such as ground elder and bindweed seem to return repeatedly no matter what we do. So, what are the alternatives? Here are some of the options to consider when weeding your own patch.
You may also like:
- The 10 weeds you need to worry about in your garden - and the 10 you can happily leave be
- Weeds can help gardeners adapt to a changing climate
- Japanese knotweed: dos and don'ts
- I got a hori hori knife and became a gardening ninja
Make your own weedkiller
You can find many different recipes for homemade weedkiller online and on social media. But do any of them actually work?
One of the most effective mixes, says Michael Griffiths, is made from a simple mixture of vinegar, salt and washing up liquid. Fill a spray bottle with acetic or distilled vinegar, add two cups of table salt and a quarter of a cup of dish soap. “The vinegar and salt dry out the weeds, the soap helps the mixture to stick to the weeds and it also cuts through the waxy coating that’s on the leaves for the weedkiller to take effect,” he says.
But he warns this homemade spray is only suitable for treating weeds in the cracks between paving stones or on paths and driveways. “It’s never to be used on beds or where you’re growing food because ultimately salt stays in the soil.” He recently tested another popular online recipe using baking soda and vinegar, but concluded it wasn’t as effective, as the two ingredients neutralise one another.
Gardeners might also question whether using home chemicals like this could be damaging to pollinators who may feed on flowering weeds, as well as other visiting garden wildlife such as birds and hedgehogs.
Put the kettle on
If you have boiling water left over in the kettle after you have made a cup of tea, what could be simpler than pouring it onto a weed and watching it turn bright green then shrivel? This popular social media trend is another one for weeds between paving stones and in paths and driveways, as in borders it risks killing other plants you want to keep.
Again, it’s worth considering how you feel about scalding the insects and microbes that may be living in and around these areas. It is also not ideal if you have lots of weeds to deal with as refilling and boiling the kettle consumes time and energy.
Burn with a thermal weeder
The many videos online of people frying weeds with burners look deeply satisfying, but flame-based appliances risk starting garden fires in warmer weather. These days there are safer alternatives known as thermal weeders that can blast out a high volume of heat at unwanted plants without setting them on fire, destroying them by making their cells explode. “There was a big problem with people using flame-based weeders, but now they have electric ones where there’s no flame, it’s just like a really hot hairdryer, and that works just as well,” says Michael Griffiths.
Nuke the knotweed
Even those adamantly opposed to the use of herbicides usually concede they are necessary in the case of Japanese knotweed, a highly invasive non-native plant which can damage property and affect mortgage applications.
But an exciting new approach developed by SoilWise in the Netherlands, and patented as Roots Reset with CleaRoot, uses a 100% plant-based product to feed micro-organisms in the soil, which will then break down the roots of Japanese knotweed and other invasive plants.
It is a one-off treatment that works by removing all above ground plant material, spreading the feed over the surface of the soil, mixing it in mechanically, then covering the soil with an oxygen-proof membrane. This allows anaerobic bacteria to grow and feed off the roots in a fermentation process. After six to 12 months, the knotweed is eliminated, and you can resow the soil with new plant seed.
Try goatscaping
If you are not looking for selective weeding but a scorched earth policy of complete clearance, consider goats. They are natural grazers and will munch their way merrily through a wide variety of weeds including brambles, nettles and thistles. Their prehensile lips mean they can get around thorns to eat the greenery. An added benefit is that weed seeds are generally killed during their digestion process. They can also be used to control Japanese knotweed, although they won’t eradicate it altogether.
There are several companies and organisations that now hire herds of goats out for short term domestic grazing use, and they are friendly animals to have around into the bargain. A perimeter can be set up around an area and they are typically furnished with collars that will keep them within this boundary, so you can rest assured they won’t munch down on your prize petunias.
Bio Goats 2 Rent, an eco-friendly weed and brush control company in South Wales, hires goats out to the private, business and agricultural sectors for conservation grazing, and is completely booked out for the year, while Street Goat in Bristol have several herds working across sites and allotments in the city, so it is obviously a popular approach. There are similar companies in the USA such as Goats on the Go, and Billy’s Rent a Goat in Ireland.
It’s a great way to clear a really overgrown patch without reaching for the sprayer or spending hours using heavy, loud and fume-spewing power tools. Obviously this is more for those with bigger gardens or large overgrown plots of land they want completely cleared, but should you be inclined, we have also seen large groups of guinea pigs used to clear a smaller area…
Get the mower out
Using a hoe or weeding by hand are great options for annual weeds with shallow roots that can be easily sliced and lifted from the soil and added to the compost heap, but perennial weeds can be trickier to remove as they often have deep tap roots. Regular mowing and strimming before they have a chance to set seed can help to weaken them.
Michael Griffiths, who goes by the_mediterranean_gardener on Instagram, advises that repeated mowing and hand pulling can help to weaken hard-to-get-rid-of weeds such as bindweed (Convulvulus sepium). “If you remove it regularly, it will die back. That’s why you don’t often see it in lawns. If you cut your grass regularly it’s not able to survive there,” he says.
Bindweed will return if there is even a tiny fragment of the root system left in place, so short of digging over a bed completely, you must remove it regularly to keep it under control. “You want to get your hand down right at the base and slowly pull it out, because that way you will get as much of the root out as possible,” says Griffiths. He adds: “Just keep on top of it. You want to be checking at least twice a week in summer to get it under control.”
Cover and smother
Another great way to eliminate weeds naturally is to smother them, depriving them of air and light to kill or weaken them. Covering empty beds over winter can help to remove weeds before you start growing again next spring.
Cardboard is an effective, sustainable, and readily available option, and a good way to re-use all that Amazon packaging. Make sure to remove all the tape and tacks first, and to overlap pieces so there are no gaps for weeds to poke through.
You can also try suppressing weeds with a thick layer of organic, biodegradable mulch such as homemade compost or wood chip, at least 5cm thick. Alternatives include biodegradable mulch mats made from recycled jute or wool. Weed control matting made from woven black plastic is widely used in the landscaping industry but can cause problems when it starts to degrade.
Designer Will Tomson took a rather novel approach to smothering ground elder when he dug out a natural swimming pond in his own garden, and used the leftover earth to cover a troublesome 8m x 3m bed of the stuff. “I had to put the spoil somewhere, and I came up with the idea to smother the ground elder with at least 60cm of soil. I knew that mechanically weeding it out would take forever and not quite eradicate it. It worked really well.”
While Tomson used a digger to shift the soil from his swimming pool, with a smaller pond you could do the same by hand. Keeping the topsoil within his garden rather than taking it away was a more sustainable option. He planted robust perennials such as Echinops and Cephalaria gigantea into the new bed, and three years on, it is still free of ground elder.
Use bully plants
If you are happy to play the long game, rather than ridding your garden of weeds in one go, growing other plants that will outcompete them can be a great option. Think about what will thrive in that location and choose plants that are slightly bigger and more vigorous than the weeds you want to get rid of.
Garden designer Jack Wallington, author of Wild About Weeds: Garden Design with Rebel Plants, has done this in his garden in Yorkshire, by planting a mix of perennials including Brunnera, Astrantia and Pulmonaria over a patch of grass that was previously filled with creeping buttercup and dandelions. Two years on, his plan is working, and the perennials are taking over.
“In the wild, plants grow and outcompete each other in this constant dynamism and I’m interested in bringing that to gardens,” he says. “When we moved to Yorkshire, I decided that rather than weed everything I would plant some things that would be slightly bigger and more vigorous than the plants already there.”
Brunnera and Pulmonaria work particularly well because they are semi-evergreen, so their leaves cover the ground for much of the year, preventing weed seeds from springing up. Other good groundcover plants to outcompete weeds include Oxford cranesbill (Geranium x oxonianum), foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia), sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum).
Be a garden ninja
One of the reasons perennial weeds are so hard to get rid of is that they are masters at the art of putting down deep roots, especially in difficult to get to places such as in the cracks between pavers, or right next to the roots of another more desirable plant.
A good way of dealing with this is to use specialist tools such as a Japanese hori hori knife, or a dandelion weeder, which are designed to target specific plants without damaging their neighbours. Sneeboer make a ‘wrotter’ hand weeding tool for this very purpose.
Border control
While it won’t get rid of weeds per se, edging borders helps to prevent them from spreading from lawns into flowerbeds and vice versa. There are many affordable options on the market made from a range of materials including metal and wood that can easily be fitted. If you have more persistent offenders such as ground elder, horsetail or bamboo, you can try installing root barriers which prevent them from spreading underground as well as overground.
Let it go, and relax
The modern gardening aesthetic allows us to see the value in all plants and to appreciate the beauty of wildflowers and self-sowers. The key is in the editing: letting some weeds grow without allowing them to take over.
“I’m not as pedantic about weeding as I used to be,” says Will Tomson. “I’m letting some things grow, such as native grasses, which are good for wildlife. It’s about selective editing. I let the odd thistle grow in my garden and just deadhead them - they are interesting structurally, and good for wildlife as well. It’s having that narrative that they have their place in the garden, but not letting them take over.”
