How do I get ahead of weeds for the season?

Weeding is mostly done too late, when plants are established and seeding. An hour spread across early spring saves most of the summer's work, and the reason is arithmetic rather than diligence.

Safety

Step by step

1. Start early, when they are seedlings.A weed seedling takes a second to remove and a mature one takes a minute plus everything it has seeded. Early spring is when the whole season's work is decided.
2. Tell annual from perennial.Annuals — chickweed, groundsel, bittercress — grow, seed and die in a season, so stopping them seeding is the whole job. Perennials — dandelion, bindweed, couch grass, ground elder — survive in the root and regrow from any fragment left behind.
3. Hoe annuals on a dry day.A sharp hoe just below the surface severs the seedlings and they dry out where they lie. On a wet day they re-root. This is by far the fastest method for open ground.
4. Keep the hoe sharp and shallow.It should slice, not drag. Working deeper brings buried weed seed to the surface, which creates the next flush.
5. Dig perennials out entirely.A fork rather than a trowel, loosening around the root and lifting the whole thing. Dandelion and dock regrow from a snapped taproot, and bindweed and ground elder from any fragment.
6. Do not rotavate ground with perennial weeds.It chops the roots into hundreds of fragments and each becomes a new plant. It is the fastest way to make couch grass or bindweed permanent.
7. Never let anything seed.A single groundsel plant produces thousands of seeds and several generations in a season. If you do nothing else, remove flowering weeds before they set seed.
8. Mulch the bare soil.Five to seven centimetres of bark, compost or well-rotted manure over weed-free damp soil. It blocks light so seeds cannot germinate, and it is the measure that reduces next year's weeding rather than this week's.
9. Use light exclusion for bad areas.Cardboard or black membrane over an infested bed, left in place for a season, exhausts even ground elder and bindweed. Slow, and more effective than repeated digging.
10. Plant closely so there is no gap.Ground covered by plants is not colonised by weeds. Close planting and ground-cover species do permanently what mulch does temporarily.
11. Use weedkiller narrowly if at all.For deep-rooted perennials in a path or drive where digging is impossible. Follow the label, never spray in wind, and keep it away from ponds and drains.
12. Know the ones with legal obligations.Japanese knotweed must not be spread and has specific disposal rules; giant hogweed causes severe burns. Both need proper handling rather than a fork on a Sunday afternoon.
13. Compost carefully.Annual weeds before they seed are fine. Perennial roots and anything seeding should go to the council green waste, which reaches temperatures a garden heap does not.
14. Do a little often.Ten minutes a week through spring beats a day in July. The plants are smaller, the roots come out whole, and nothing has seeded.

Tips

• Hoe on a dry, breezy day. The seedlings desiccate where they fall and there is nothing to pick up.
• Mulch is the highest-value weeding you will do, because it prevents rather than removes. Apply it to damp, already-weeded soil.
• Take the flower heads off even if you have no time for anything else. It stops next year's problem regardless of what happens to the plant.

Common mistakes

• Rotavating ground with perennial weeds — It cuts the roots into fragments and each one regrows. Couch grass, bindweed and ground elder all multiply this way, turning one problem into hundreds.
• Mulching over weeds or dry soil — Perennials grow straight through it, and mulch on dry soil keeps rain out. Weed first, water if needed, then mulch thickly.

If it doesn't work

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