GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Use Weeds Killer to Keep Weeds Out of My Flower Garden?

23-06-2004, 12:04 AM

(Jay Chan) wrote in
om:

I see that home center sells some chemical weed killers that are
supposed to be used in a flower garden. Are they good? Can I safely
use those chemicals around plants that I have planted in the garden? I
don't hear much about this type of product. Seem like I hear mostly
about similar products that we use in lawn, but not in a garden.

I would like to find a way to keep weeds out of my flower garden in
order to reduce the never ending task of pulling weeds out from the
garden.

Thanks.

Jay Chan

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The following is the reason why I want to use weeds killer instead of
mulch. This is not directly related to this post. But I mention the
reason here just in case someone wonders why I don't use mulch.
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I know I could have put mulch to suppress weeds and to ease the task
of pulling out weeds. In the first year after I put mulch in the
flower garden, I found that the mulch really helped me to reduce weeds
in my flower garden. But a couple years later, the mulch is pretty
much rotted and decomposed to be similar to soil. This means it no
longer functions as mulch.

If I keep adding mulch, I will do more harm than good. The reason is
that the flower garden is a rised bed around the house foundation.
There is only 8" clearance between the mulch and the wooden structure
of my house. I am afraid that putting more mulch will reduce the
clearance to a point that I will invite termites into my house.
Actually, I may decide to remove the existing mulch from around the
foundation garden just to increase the clearance between the wooden
structure from the soil.

And I really don't like to use inorganic mulch (such as stones) in
areas where I will be actively doing planting every year.

I guess the other alternative is to replace the existing mulch with
new mulch, and do this every two years or so. This sounds like a lot
of work though; I probably prefer hand pulling weeds than replacing
the mulch.

Try landscape fabric. It blocks a lot of weeds and makes pulling the
others easier. However, manufacturers recommend you cover the fabric
with X inches (cm) of mulch.

As for using herbicides, I never had to do it, so I don't know. (Have
had landscape fabric installed 2-3 years now).