Pull Weeds with Me ✿ March 2024

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In this video I do something that a lot of wildlife gardeners warn against: cleaning up the garden too early. However, there's an exception in my mind: a new garden area. Your new garden areas need more maintenance more often, because weeds can quickly smother your new young native plants. For example, I have a lot of weed pressure from cool season weeds like henbit, purple deadnettle, hairy bittercress, speedwell, and other weeds that hang out for longer, like creeping charlie. Don't forget I also have the ever annoying bermuda grass that is basically year round, with the exception of going dormant in winter. When I was pulling all these crazy amounts of winter and early spring weeds, I found lots of native plants that were leggy and in need of some room to grow! They were craving sun but were buried under speedwell, henbit, and more...so sometimes you need to clean up your garden early, if your garden is very young like this garden bed is.
Thanks for watching!

[@PlantNative]

Gotta get those invasives early. I agree. You’re motivating me to get out and pull the Hoary Bittercress.

[@awildapproach]

I like to be hands off as much as I can, because I hate breaking stems the bees could be living in, but sometimes the stems are blocking our way to pulling the invasive cool season weeds. So, I focus on the worst areas and clean those up early, but leave the rest as long as I can. :) I have lots of that dang winter creeper coming up all over my front garden this year! It's horrendous!

[@Hayley-sl9lm]

I feel like every time I do this I always end up accidentally pulling up some good stuff. I have really compacted clay and I have dock, dandelions, things with HUGE roots that I can't remove without a lot of soil disturbance. I don't want to use a hoe for the same reason, I know I'll accidentally mow down things I want! Just takes a lot of care and it is always better to catch things early.

[@awildapproach]

I worry about this, too!! Although I have been using a hoe here and there. It can be a challenge even moreso in the compacted areas. I feel you.

[@dthor68]

I get lots of non-native weeds too. I was wondering if mulch would help? Do you use any mulch, if so, what type?

[@awildapproach]

I've used several different mulches in the past, and my favorite is just fallen leaves. The typical wood chip mulch I buy and even arborist chips just smother my self sown seedlings and they do not grow through that. But my number one enemy Bermuda Grass WILL grow right through those woody mulches. So I do not like mulch in general. I use it on rare occasion when starting a new bed with limited plants, but usually I like to let my native plants self sow and they can't if they are surrounded in mulch. In short, I prefer "green mulch" which simply means planting more plants. Couldn't mulch this bed as it was full of seeds I sowed as well as baby seedlings from the year prior. I needed bare ground for the seeds to germinate. Unfortunately the non-native junk also pops up. It's definitely a process. But I love when things finally fill in with mostly native plants and things stitch together. Happy Gardening!