10 easy ways to minimise weeds

1. Don’t ignore them or they’ll get out of control.
2. Come up with a management plan and stick to it – 20 minutes once a week could be all it takes.
3. Pick on the little ones first, as they are the easiest and quickest to eradicate.
4. Moisten the soil first – especially when trying to dig out established weeds.
5. Minimise soil disturbance. Each time you dig over a garden bed, old weed seeds are brought to the surface and will germinate readily in loose soil.
6. Keep soil covered – smother weed seeds with mulch or groundcovers.
7. Try sheet mulching – for big outbreaks, mow or slash the weeds to ground level, smother with cardboard or newspaper (10-sheets thick), then top with mulch.
8. Give solarisation a go – slash the weeds, then cover large areas with black plastic for 4–6 weeks to heat up the weeds and basically ‘cook’ them.
9. Enlist some helpers – chooks make light work of a weedy patch, but they don’t discriminate, so take measures to protect the plants you love.
10. Remove any seed heads and flowers that appear on weeds, to avoid a population explosion. It only takes a few seconds, and could save you hours of work.

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