Natural Weed Control

In recent decades, sustainable cultivation and naturalistic gardens have changed our perspective on weeds. Where people once immediately reached for chemical sprays, many now approach unwanted plants with much greater serenity. You could say that weeds are often a matter of location.

Many modern garden owners not only enjoy goutweed, nettle, shepherd's purse, and fumitory in their creative cooking, but they also understand their value for healthy soil and plants. They happily use these herbs to create liquid fertilizers (jauches) to nourish and strengthen their ornamental and edible plants. And some legumes are even excellent helpers in soil improvement when used as green manure.

Nevertheless, it's annoying when your garden path is barely visible, choked by moss and grass, freshly sown summer flowers are drowned in clover and dandelions, and your otherwise "English" lawn looks more like a lush cow pasture thanks to beautiful clover.

If you want to keep your patio slabs weed-free but dread pulling and scraping out the cracks, you can try pouring hot water on the weeds. This scorches the plants, causing them to wither within a few days. You can achieve a similar effect by using a special burner.

If you have a lawn that now looks more like a wildflower meadow, you should consider a few things. A lawn that finds optimal conditions usually won't allow a large number of weeds to settle. However, if it suffers from nutrient deficiency or is regularly cut too short, it becomes too weakened to defend itself against competition.

Likewise, a lawn that is supposed to grow in too shady areas or that has to contend with acidic soil and waterlogging grows poorly and tends to develop moss and weeds. Instead of constantly battling the same problems, you might consider redesigning the area. A shady seating area under a dense canopy is a welcome retreat in summer, and with a dark weed control fabric under a layer of gravel or bark mulch, you won't have to worry about weeds in the future.