You can control all your garden weeds with just these two tools!

We all spend so much time and effort trying to keep our gardens as weed free as possible but really there's never an end to it! They're always finding ways to sneak in. For my garden, when it's a windy day or if a storm passes through, seeds are constantly blowing in. They're coming from the fields and the nearby wild areas.

They could also be coming from your own compost pile when you spread it in the garden. Even if you turn your compost on a regular basis, it may not get hot enough to sterilize all the seeds. Every time you work the soil you bury new seeds that have just landed and expose older ones that may have been in the ground for years. In either case, chances are some will always find the right conditions they need to germinate. You need to get out and check for weeds on a regular basis. At least once a week. Or else they can get quickly out of control.

To stay ahead of the game you always want to remove them when they're small. Because in time, they'll just get larger and can overwhelm the garden robbing your plants of sunlight and all the nutrients they need. Certainly you can just pick the weeds by hand. And that's okay if you only have a few... but if you have thousands... Obviously that can be too tedious and far too time consuming. Overall I find the best weeding tool is a stirrup hoe. It has this sharp blade that cuts through the soil and is great for handling weeds of any size. You can lightly run it along the surface to take out the small ones or press down a bit to make a dig deeper. It'll cut the roots and take out the older larger ones.

I always use this tool first to take out all the weeds between the rows. The work goes pretty fast. But it's not very effective for getting those weeds that are growing right alongside your vegetables. You don't want to get too close to them. You can do a huge amount of damage if you're not careful. It can cut into the roots or even the stems of the plants you're trying to protect.

The best tool I found to do all the delicate work around your plants and still quickly and easily get all those small weeds...well I found that right in my own kitchen! A regular tablespoon! A metal one, not plastic. With this, you have great control in slicing, scratching and scraping those weeds away. Just run the spoon along the top of the ground and turn it slightly and then use the edge to cut in. It will take care of uprooting them with no problem yet you can go right up to the base of your plants and even touch them without getting too concerned about causing any damage.
This will work in all soils even with hard clay. But like all gardening work, I found it's always a bit easier if the soil has just a little moisture in it.

It's certainly much faster than just picking them out a few at a time.
But you probably want to use an older spoon. One that you won't mind scuffing up. You're going to be hitting stones and the grit in the soil will scratch up the finish so you really don't want to use your best tableware. The next time you're at one of those discount stores you can pick up a few spoons for under a dollar. It's probably going to be the cheapest gardening tool you'll ever use.

This is especially good if you're growing plants with very shallow roots like watermelon or cantaloupe. You want to take extra care not to disturb them. So you may first want to use your stirrup hoe further away from the base and then use a spoon for all the closer weeds.
Afterwards you should take the extra step to mulch if you have it. It will help reduce the number of times you have to weed. Those seeds will still come in and land on top of the mulch. Some may even germinate. But they'll soon die if their roots can't reach the soil. You'll want to make sure you lay down a thick base. So start with a couple of inches. Those seeds will always find a way to take advantage if you leave any gaps or spread the mulch too thin. Here I'm using straw but if you watch my other videos I also use my grass clippings a lot.

One last point. If it's a dry hot day, the weeds you uproot will probably just shrivel up and dry out on the surface. And that's fine. Just leave them in place and they'll add to the fertility. However, if the soil is very damp and it's a cloudy day then some of the stronger ones that still have their roots intact could recover and continue to grow. On those days I make it a good practice to gather most of them up and toss them on the compost pile.

So between using the stirrup hoe and just a spoon, I can get rid of practically every weed in the garden. Sometimes they can be a big chore but when you take them out when they're small you'll be able to save yourself hours at work this way. Give these tools a try and let me know how they work out for you. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time on "Garden Well Eat Well"!

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