Weeding 101

My Friend Recently Asked Me (and I quote): “How Do You Keep the Weeds Down in Your Garden?”

After staring at her for a few seconds to see if she was kidding, or if I had misunderstood her, I finally said, “I pull them.” She tossed her head back laughing (so she was kidding?) and said “No, no, no, no. I mean a lot of weeds!” And I stared at her again and said “What, are you kidding? I pull them.”

Clearly we were not on the same wave length. She kept trying to tell me it was impossible to pull the amount of weeds she was talking about — surely I didn’t understand what she was dealing with.

Oh no?

How about this?

If you look closely you will see there are some wee plants tucked in among the weeds. Crab grass? Barn grass? Who cares grass. It’s a pain-in-my-ass grass and it has to come out.

If you have a yard, a garden, dirt in a bucket then you battle weeds. I’m not above using Round-Up, or even Weed-B-Gone in some areas of the yard. I try not to, but sometimes I do. But in my garden, well, isn’t that the whole point of growing your own stuff? To not have it laced with chemicals? So I pull them, dig them, hoe them, mow them. And I try really hard not to let them go to seed. Which is just about effing impossible.

When it is weeding day, I get my garden gloves and my iPod. I play several back-to-back Good Food or MacBreak Weekly podcasts, or listen to a good (and sometime bad) Audible book. And the hours pass. If you are looking for an escape from family life, it’s a great activity, because no sane child or husband will come looking for you while you are weeding, lest they be given a bucket and put to work. And, in the end the Weeds B Gone with no bad chemicals. Plus, Fatty got some exercise.

And if this is all just too confusing and technical for you, I’ve made a simple, easy-to-follow how-to video: