In this modern, fast-paced world, you will almost never see anyone weeding a lawn by hand as one of the primary means of lawn weed removal (unless you’re my neighbor). Hand-weeding, however, can be your most effective weapon in getting rid of weeds. I know it is kind of obvious… I mean, the weed is there, you pull it, and… presto!, it’s gone, but you would be surprised how many people resist simply going out there and pulling out weeds from the lawn. The excuses I get from gardeners are interminable.
Sure, on a huge lawn this idea can be crazy (and I don’t recommend it unless the weeds are in a small area). Even on your average, middle-income family home going out and pulling every weed from the lawn can seem a daunting task. For very small yards and small patio areas with lawns, however, you shouldn’t be using any other method of getting rid of the weeds. Case in point. A few months ago, a relative asked me how they could get rid of weeds from their zoysia lawn which measured maybe eighty square feet. I knew the real question he was asking was: what kind of chemical should be used to clean-up the weeds? While I didn’t weed the lawn right then and there, a few days later I returned and did a thorough hand-weeding of the heavy-in-weeds lawn in about forty-five minutes, less time than it takes most people to drive to their local Home Depot for a bag of anti-weed chemical warfare product.
Hand-weeding’s greatest adversary isn’t really weeds at all, but good old laziness. People just want the easy way out and don’t want to sit down on their lawn for a an hour or so to pull weeds, but, as I described above, a lot of times you can do hand weeding in less time than it takes to go get something else. Since driving a car doesn’t really feel like work, going down to your local garden center feels like the right choice. Even if you end up driving to Home Depot for thirty minutes or more round-trip, buying a bag of herbicide (and other stuff you don’t need) that sits in your garage for two months, and then spend twenty minutes figuring out how to use it, plus another thirty applying it (all while your weeds are growing and spreading their seeds all over the place).
Weeding by hand is especially great for weeds which do not propagate by underground runners. Once these weeds are gone, and assuming you did a good-job of pulling it out by hand or with a tool designed for weeding, the weed will simply never come back (although if it already flowered and seeded, you may be dealing with descendants). For a lot of spreading grasses and other weeds with underground runners (such as dollarweed), you should expect some of the weeds to return as the runners tend to be left behind even when you use the proper tools for the job. You could hunt the underground runners down, but you may end up tearing down your lawn in the process.
How to do it right: Weeding a lawn isn’t just about going out there and pulling (although if you do that with enough frequency you’ll probably come out winning in the end). You need some kind of hand weeding tool that you feel comfortable with. Like the battle between PC and Mac users, every gardener has a favorite tool with which to weed with, but I personally feel a hand-weeder such as the one in the picture below, is the best choice as its thin-profile keeps it from damaging your lawn too much and its length can reach down to deep tap-roots. You can get these anywhere, such as Wal-Mart, Lowes’, and Home Depot. You can also buy them from online retailers such as Amazon.com (To buy the exact one in the picture below from Amazon, click HERE. Please note, Gardenipedia is an Amazon affiliate). The specific purpose of the hand-tool is to give you a bit of leverage for those weeds that simply don’t budge when you pull them, as well as to help with those that have deep root systems.
(Photo by Amazon.com)
If your lawn has a sporadic weed here and there, just go out and get them. There really isn’t any need for any technique if you’re pulling out three weeds. However, if you got a serious weed situation, it would probably be best to break the job down into parts, that way you’ll feel some progress and not get overwhelmed by the task. Here is the breakdown:
1) Identify your weeds: First, using the Internet, Books, the weeds themselves, or that neighbor who works for your state agriculture department (Gardenipedia will have a weed guide in the future), identify what kind of weeds you have. Are these grasses or broadleaf weeds? Do they spread by runners? Do they have deep roots? Are there more weeds than lawn?
2) Understand that some weeds already won: For areas in which a weed may have completely overwhelmed your lawn, such as in parts where an herbicide-resistant Bermuda grass has completely overtaken a St. Augustine lawn, your best bet is to remove the lawn and weeds altogether (making sure to completely remove the weeds and their roots) and start with a brand-spanking-new lawn. Otherwise you’re in for a long battle you may not win EVER.
3) Get rid of the easy weeds first: If you want to feel satisfaction as soon as possible and avoid getting a sense that you’re not going anywhere with this, make sure you take out all the easy weeds first. If you notice a particular weed comes out easy, get rid of all of the same ones fast. Depending on your weed situation, more than half-your weeds may be gone after this and you may have a nice big pile to show for your efforts (Go ahead… get your wife or husband and show them what you’ve done. I’ll wait.).
4) Deal with the remaining weeds with detail: If you’re dealing with weeds that have a deep tap-root, stick your hand weeder all the way down as deep as you can and begin to pivot the handle, while you gently pull on the weed. If you feel like the plant is about to break in half, use more pivoting from the weeder and less pull from your hand. Do note that some deep-rooted weeds will die even if the tap root remains behind. For the more annoying runner-infested weeds, such as torpedo-grass, you may need a little more finesse from your hand weeder, but try to not only pull the weed, but find the node (or “intersection”) from which the above ground “stem” came from. This may delay the reemergence of the weed. Weeds that grow from runners are very hard to remove by hand.
5) Anything left behind? If anything was left behind and you know it will come back, you could apply a herbicide in the general area where that weed is. Usually, though, if you continue to weed that area regularly, you will win over the plant… they need their leaves for energy production and if you keep pulling them out before they are fully developed, the plant will die.
Don’t wait so long between hand-weeding that you end up having to start over. A once a week quick check of the weeds is great, although a once a month, more thorough job, is fine as well. If more time passes than that, you may be in trouble again. It is tedious work, but it will pay off in the longtime.
TRIED TO KEEP IT SHORT FOR YALL WHAT YALL THINK MY GARDENERS?
Sure, on a huge lawn this idea can be crazy (and I don’t recommend it unless the weeds are in a small area). Even on your average, middle-income family home going out and pulling every weed from the lawn can seem a daunting task. For very small yards and small patio areas with lawns, however, you shouldn’t be using any other method of getting rid of the weeds. Case in point. A few months ago, a relative asked me how they could get rid of weeds from their zoysia lawn which measured maybe eighty square feet. I knew the real question he was asking was: what kind of chemical should be used to clean-up the weeds? While I didn’t weed the lawn right then and there, a few days later I returned and did a thorough hand-weeding of the heavy-in-weeds lawn in about forty-five minutes, less time than it takes most people to drive to their local Home Depot for a bag of anti-weed chemical warfare product.
Hand-weeding’s greatest adversary isn’t really weeds at all, but good old laziness. People just want the easy way out and don’t want to sit down on their lawn for a an hour or so to pull weeds, but, as I described above, a lot of times you can do hand weeding in less time than it takes to go get something else. Since driving a car doesn’t really feel like work, going down to your local garden center feels like the right choice. Even if you end up driving to Home Depot for thirty minutes or more round-trip, buying a bag of herbicide (and other stuff you don’t need) that sits in your garage for two months, and then spend twenty minutes figuring out how to use it, plus another thirty applying it (all while your weeds are growing and spreading their seeds all over the place).
Weeding by hand is especially great for weeds which do not propagate by underground runners. Once these weeds are gone, and assuming you did a good-job of pulling it out by hand or with a tool designed for weeding, the weed will simply never come back (although if it already flowered and seeded, you may be dealing with descendants). For a lot of spreading grasses and other weeds with underground runners (such as dollarweed), you should expect some of the weeds to return as the runners tend to be left behind even when you use the proper tools for the job. You could hunt the underground runners down, but you may end up tearing down your lawn in the process.
How to do it right: Weeding a lawn isn’t just about going out there and pulling (although if you do that with enough frequency you’ll probably come out winning in the end). You need some kind of hand weeding tool that you feel comfortable with. Like the battle between PC and Mac users, every gardener has a favorite tool with which to weed with, but I personally feel a hand-weeder such as the one in the picture below, is the best choice as its thin-profile keeps it from damaging your lawn too much and its length can reach down to deep tap-roots. You can get these anywhere, such as Wal-Mart, Lowes’, and Home Depot. You can also buy them from online retailers such as Amazon.com (To buy the exact one in the picture below from Amazon, click HERE. Please note, Gardenipedia is an Amazon affiliate). The specific purpose of the hand-tool is to give you a bit of leverage for those weeds that simply don’t budge when you pull them, as well as to help with those that have deep root systems.
(Photo by Amazon.com)
If your lawn has a sporadic weed here and there, just go out and get them. There really isn’t any need for any technique if you’re pulling out three weeds. However, if you got a serious weed situation, it would probably be best to break the job down into parts, that way you’ll feel some progress and not get overwhelmed by the task. Here is the breakdown:
1) Identify your weeds: First, using the Internet, Books, the weeds themselves, or that neighbor who works for your state agriculture department (Gardenipedia will have a weed guide in the future), identify what kind of weeds you have. Are these grasses or broadleaf weeds? Do they spread by runners? Do they have deep roots? Are there more weeds than lawn?
2) Understand that some weeds already won: For areas in which a weed may have completely overwhelmed your lawn, such as in parts where an herbicide-resistant Bermuda grass has completely overtaken a St. Augustine lawn, your best bet is to remove the lawn and weeds altogether (making sure to completely remove the weeds and their roots) and start with a brand-spanking-new lawn. Otherwise you’re in for a long battle you may not win EVER.
3) Get rid of the easy weeds first: If you want to feel satisfaction as soon as possible and avoid getting a sense that you’re not going anywhere with this, make sure you take out all the easy weeds first. If you notice a particular weed comes out easy, get rid of all of the same ones fast. Depending on your weed situation, more than half-your weeds may be gone after this and you may have a nice big pile to show for your efforts (Go ahead… get your wife or husband and show them what you’ve done. I’ll wait.).
4) Deal with the remaining weeds with detail: If you’re dealing with weeds that have a deep tap-root, stick your hand weeder all the way down as deep as you can and begin to pivot the handle, while you gently pull on the weed. If you feel like the plant is about to break in half, use more pivoting from the weeder and less pull from your hand. Do note that some deep-rooted weeds will die even if the tap root remains behind. For the more annoying runner-infested weeds, such as torpedo-grass, you may need a little more finesse from your hand weeder, but try to not only pull the weed, but find the node (or “intersection”) from which the above ground “stem” came from. This may delay the reemergence of the weed. Weeds that grow from runners are very hard to remove by hand.
5) Anything left behind? If anything was left behind and you know it will come back, you could apply a herbicide in the general area where that weed is. Usually, though, if you continue to weed that area regularly, you will win over the plant… they need their leaves for energy production and if you keep pulling them out before they are fully developed, the plant will die.
Don’t wait so long between hand-weeding that you end up having to start over. A once a week quick check of the weeds is great, although a once a month, more thorough job, is fine as well. If more time passes than that, you may be in trouble again. It is tedious work, but it will pay off in the longtime.
TRIED TO KEEP IT SHORT FOR YALL WHAT YALL THINK MY GARDENERS?
