Would you like to know how to get rid of grass in vegetable garden? This post will provide you with sufficient information regarding how to clear a vegetable garden full of weeds.
Grass can be quite attractive if it is on fallow soil and well-controlled. However, it is nuisance in a vegetable garden. Asides from the fact that grass competes with the vegetables for nutrients, it also chokes your plants.
You can easily get rid of weeds using herbicides but you will hurt your plants alongside. This is why many vegetable farmers want to know how to get rid of weeds in a vegetable garden naturally. Continue reading this post as we will show you how to achieve this feat.
How do I kill grass in my garden without killing vegetables?
Have you been facing issues with ridding your vegetable garden of weeds? Are you looking for the cheapest way to kill grass? Would you like to know how to get rid of grass in garden without killing plants? We have the solution to your problems in this section. Before we go ahead, let’s lay a foundation.
Weeds are unwanted plants. Such plants include flowers, grasses, and even species of vegetables that you don’t want. Vegetables require water, ample space, and nutrients to thrive and blossom.
The challenge is that weeds also have the same requirements for survival. When you leave them to grow with your vegetables, they consume the resources that your plants need. As a result, your vegetables suffer stunted growth and may even die off.
Examples of weeds include yard grasses, native grasses, unwanted legumes, forbs, and broad leaves. They spread through several agents such as animals, water, and wind to mention a few. Here’s how to get rid of grass in garden without killing the plants:
Uprooting by hand
This method is labor-intensive and requires using your hands to uproot the weeds. You will have to walk through the garden, bend down, and get rid of each weed by hand.
This process may take several hours to days depending on the size of your garden. Asides from the time, you may end up hurting your hands and back in the process. However, it is very effective as you remove the weeds from the roots so they don’t grow back easily.
Organic weed killer
Not everyone wants to spend several hours walking around their garden uprooting weeds by hand. If you fall into this category, then you may want to consider using an organic weed killer. This is one of the cheapest ways to kill grass and it is also safe for your vegetables.
All you need to do is to spray the weed killer to a target area to kill the established weeds. Note that organic weed killers work slowly so you may see results after two to three weeks. Use the dead grasses as manure for your garden to add nutrients to the soil for your vegetables.
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Soil solarization
Another organic way of killing weeds in garden without hurting the vegetables is soil solarization. It involves using the sun to kill weeds and it works best in summer.
To carry out this process, place a clear or dark plastic bag over the ground. Hold the edges down with heavy objects like rocks.
Before doing this, make sure that you have cut the weeds to short heights for easy covering. The sun heats the plastic bag and suffocates them so that they die off eventually.
This process is also slow as the weeds eventually die within two to three months. The challenge of using this method is that you must allow the garden to be fallow for this period.
Boiling water
While this seems quite ridiculous, it works. If your garden isn’t large, you can pour boiling water over the weeds and they’d die slowly after turning brown.
To get the best of this method, you should target the weeds and repeat it several times. Pour the hot water over the grasses for long repeated periods so that they die to their roots.
How do you kill grass in a vegetable garden bed?
There are several reasons why you should get rid of grass in vegetable garden. From making your garden look hideous to suffocating the vegetables and consuming all the important nutrients.
Dealing with weeds can be quite difficult because most grasses are highly resilient. In this section, we will show you how to organically kill weeds easily.
Handpicking
The cheapest way to kill grass in a vegetable bed is to handpick them. This method comes in handy if your vegetables are already growing.
It is safer than spraying them with some herbicides or using solarization. The only challenge with this method is that it consumes time and effort. Depending on the size of your garden, you should be done in a few hours or days.
Selective herbicide
Wondering how to clear a vegetable garden full of weeds without handpicking? You can consider using a selective herbicide. There are grass-specific herbicides that kill just grasses without causing harm to vegetables.
Such herbicides eliminate many annual and perennial grasses. The application is similar to that of a broad-spectrum herbicide.
Apply pre-emergent weed killers
As the name implies, this weed killer prevents seeds from germinating in the ground. However, they don’t affect existing plants or weeds.
You can apply this method after clearing the vegetable bed and your plants are already germinating. Doing this prevents the growth of weeds but won’t kill existing weeds. As such, you have to kill existing weeds using other methods.
Organic methods
Finally, you can employ different organic methods to get rid of weeds in a vegetable garden bed. Some of these methods include diluted vinegar, boiling water, solarization, flame, and corn gluten. We have described some of them earlier in this post.
How to Get Rid of Grass in Vegetable Garden-Wrapping up
Congratulations, you now know how to get rid of grass in vegetable garden. We gave explained different methods in this post. Tell us in the comments section which one has proven the most efficient in your garden.
