​Quick thought on weed control.

Most of us don't like to get out in the garden and pull weeds. We just want to enjoy our yards.  Crabgrass, bermuda, chickweed, they all grow fast and take over our beds quickly! It's annoying, especially after we just mulched or planted new landscape. I have a few tips that may help you out.

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1) Layout the garden in a way that you can easily control the weeds. 
If you like to spray the weeds with liquid weed control, don't use a lot of ground covers or perennials. Weeds like to grow up in ground covers and unless you have a selective weed control product you have to manually remove all the weeds.  Use shrub like plants with single or multi-stem. You'll be able to walk around the yard, hit the weeds with a killer and not damage your plants. 

2) Anything in the wrong place is a weed. 
If you have Fescue in your flower bed. It is a weed. If you have a plant you don't want, it's still a weed. Define your flower beds well. Give them deep trench edges so the lawn doesn't take over. This will help you quickly identify unwanted plants before their roots take hold!

3) Use per-emergent in the Spring. 
Grabbing some Preen or start using some old newspapers to keep the weeds down. Don't use weed block fabric. It will not decompose, typically it just creates a second layer of soil for weeds to grown in on top of the fabric. Plus it is difficult to add plants through the fabric if you want to change your landscape at some point down the road. Stay ahead of the weeds, fight them before you seen them. 

4) Use pine straw or mulch annually. 
Keeping the beds fresh, helps with controlling the weeds. Especially if you rake and cleanout the beds before applying the new material. Pine straw works really well because of its acidity. Using pine straw a few years in a row will act as a natural weed deterrent.

5) Schedule your weed control. 
What do your Saturday mornings look like? Sundays? Schedule a weed and coffee date with your yard. Most of the time the weeds get out of hand because we didn't see them until they are large and rooted in. Grab the can of RoundUp and your coffee, should only take a few minutes weekly. If you don't like RoundUp here's another option(link to another blog). Spending a few minutes pulling weeds can be therapeutic too!