A great, recently-deceased English garden expert never failed to recommend that weeding be done from a kneeling position.\u00a0 One of his equally great American counterparts, who is still among us, dictates that weeders should never kneel.\u00a0 What’s a diligent gardener to do?\u00a0 Kneeling is hard on the knees and bending can be torture for the lower back, so there is no clear winner in the comfort contest.\u00a0 Since weeding is necessary, and good help is both expensive and hard to find, opting for the comfort of ignoring the weeds is not an option.<\/p>\n
You could, of course, create a garden made entirely of raised beds, elevating them to a height that would make bending unnecessary.\u00a0 But that’s expensive too.\u00a0 A container garden would do the job as well, but you have to commit to a regular watering schedule.\u00a0 If you care about the environment, wholesale herbicide use does not make sense.\u00a0 Even those intrepid inventors who sell their gadgets on late-night television have yet to come up with a robotic device that pulls the weeds while ignoring the flowers and vegetables. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the meantime, the weeds continue to grow, which is not necessarily all bad.\u00a0 Those weedy roots help loosen up the soil and keep it workable, and though weeding may occasionally be hard on the body, it is good for the soul.<\/p>\n
Barring all other considerations, I favor weeding from a kneeling position.\u00a0 You get an excellent view of the weeds, especially the stubborn ones that snuggle up to the pricey ornamentals in the hope of being overlooked.\u00a0 You get the same good look at the more desirable plants, which is ideal for spotting diseases and pest infestations while they are in the early, controllable stages.\u00a0 I love seeing the worms, the honey bees and cabbage butterflies going about their work while I do mine.<\/p>\n
So I use a foam kneeler and weed on my knees–until my knees start to hurt.\u00a0 Then I get up and weed from a bending position, being careful to straighten up every once in awhile to keep my back from aching.\u00a0 When periodic straightening and stretching no longer provide relief, I either stop weeding, or get back down on my knees.\u00a0 Alternating positions in this way lets you get a lot of weeding done relatively painlessly.\u00a0 I also find that pruning shrubs is a wonderful antidote to weeding pains.\u00a0 If you stop weeding and prune vigorously for twenty minutes or so, the aches in your arms will make you forget all about your knees or back.\u00a0 If someone else does your pruning, just take some aspirin or ibuprofen.\u00a0 Then get back to the weeding.<\/p>\n
As much as I value weeding, it’s easy to get too much of a good thing.\u00a0 To keep the weeds under control I also use good gardening practices like mulching and ground cover cultivation in as many beds as possible.\u00a0 Left to her own devices Nature will cover the ground with something, so it’s best to be proactive and make that something aesthetically pleasing.<\/p>\n
There are lots of organic mulches on the market.\u00a0 I like shredded pine bark, which looks good, smells good and stays put.\u00a0 If you put down a layer of newspaper about four pages thick underneath the pine bark, you will keep weeds away for an entire season.\u00a0 This practice also enriches the soil and reduces the recycling load.\u00a0 If you need to do so, you can plant right through the newspaper\/mulch layer, digging your planting hole with a sharp spade, and adding an extra shovelful of mulch afterwards to replace the small amount lost in the digging process.<\/p>\n
On my property I have lots of ground cover plants, including vinca minor, yellow archangel, English ivy, big-root geranium, creeping jenny and heron’s bill or erodium.\u00a0 The only one that irks me is the English ivy, which was probably installed by the previous owner or her predecessor.\u00a0 It not only covers the ground, but it would cover the house, the fence and the stone benches in the back yard if I allowed it to.\u00a0 I fight a pitched battle with the ivy every season just to keep it within reasonable boundaries.<\/p>\n
My favorite of all the ground covers is the big-root geranium, Geranium macrorrhizum.\u00a0 It has lovely, deeply dissected green leaves that smell like apples and color beautifully in the fall, not to mention bright pink flowers that bloom two or even three times between May and October.\u00a0 You can’t walk on big-root geranium, but it covers the ground fairly quickly, deters weeds and survives drought without a lot of extra irrigation.\u00a0 Since my garden, which could be nicknamed ” Darwin’s Quarter Acre,”\u009d has no sprinkler system, the groundcovers have to be strong to withstand climatic extremes.<\/p>\n
Strength is essential no matter how you deal with weeds.\u00a0 Manual weeding requires strong back muscles and strong knees.\u00a0 If you are lucky, planting ground covers is a one-time activity, but it still requires bending or kneeling.\u00a0 Proper mulching can involve hefting big mulch bags from one part of the garden to another.\u00a0 If your back is weak, then your garden cart or wheelbarrow should be strong.<\/p>\n
So make the most of all that effort.\u00a0 Weed thoroughly, mulch immediately, then sit back, rest all your muscles and enjoy your pristine garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A great, recently-deceased English garden expert never failed to recommend that weeding be done from a kneeling position.\u00a0 One of his equally great American counterparts, who is still among us, dictates that weeders should never kneel.\u00a0 What’s a diligent gardener to do?\u00a0 Kneeling is hard on the knees and bending can be torture for the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}