How To STOP The Most INVASIVE Weeds In The Garden - Don't Make These Mistakes

this is one of the most ferocious weeds in the entire garden and this is how we controlled it let's [Music] go and that invasive weed is known as Canada thistle now Canada thistle might not be your invasive weed it was just ours you might be suffering from something like tiger grass fire grass bind weed not weed or a whole host of other very invasive weeds that exist and hopefully by the end of this video you're going to be courage to take it on head on and not feel like you have to move your entire Garden or burn everything down with fire it is possible and you can get it in control pretty simply so the first method that we tried with no avail was cardboard sheet mulching now I'm a huge advocate of cardboard sheet mulching because it could be simpler simply take some plain cardboard and you throw it down you can do one two three layer stick however much you want and the great thing is that when you throw this down what's going to happen is it's going to smother the weeds underneath from sunlight they need sunlight to photo syn syze and create energy and without it they start to wither now there's one downside to Canada thisle at least and that's that Canada thisle is a communal weed and that basically means that it will travel via the root system if you leave a root fragment or it is allowed to create new Roots those roots will then shoot off about a foot to 2 feet in any other direction and then grow up again and that can be very discouraging because all you need is a little bit of a gap or in some cases not enough cardboard to where it can grow underneath the plant actually grows up and begins to travel and as long as it can go to where it can reach sunlight it'll continue to travel believe it or not I've seen Canada thistle come up in a bush in a boxwood that was 2 and 1/2 3 ft off the ground and this thing just got leggier than a pole bean just got super leggy and then once it reached the sunlight was game over it was thriving in between a boxwood these things are the most resilient aggressive weeds that I've ever come across but I know some of you down south you guys have some some pretty vicious ones as well but I found out real quickly that we did this whole garden with cardboard sheet mulching and within 2 3 months they were right back to where they were maybe even a little bit stronger the second method that we tried with no avail was a vinegar spray now vinegar is a really strong acid and it can be an amazing weed killer if it's used at the right time of year at the right stage of the plant's growth it can be very effective against certain weeds but not Canada thistle because K thistle again is a communal weed meaning you kill one and there's another one popping right up a foot away and so what we would do is we go through and we'd spray the foliage down with a vinegar solution during a nice hot sunny day like this and over the course of a week that foliage would turn brown it would start to wither and eventually it would die but what would happen is maybe not even a week or two later you'd see another little shoot pop up and that's because we weren't killing the root The Roots store the energy that the plant is creating from the Sun so the plant is just the tip of the iceberg the real problem is underneath the soil so vinegar was out so what did I turn to well I turned to one of the only other organic methods that I knew about at the time and that was cornmeal gluten now cornmeal gluten is an organic option and is actually really affordable and very effective essentially cornmeal gluten cornmeal from the store grits right you go to your local grocery store you pick up a bag of it super affordable very inexpensive and it essentially has an enzyme that inhibits root development of your broadleaf weeds and so I spread the the cornmeal gluten on the uh on the plants and nothing happened here's why the problem with cornmeal gluten is It's very effective but it falls into a category of herbicide known as a pre-emergent now there are pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides you've probably seen them one could be seen with like crab grass killer right crabgrass killer is a pre-emergent you use it in early spring and essentially it's an enzyme that acts exactly the same way as cornmeal gluten does where it stops the root development of of a plant emerging from a seed so you want to apply it before the seeds germinate the problem is is that it's not a post emergent a post-emergent herbicide would be something like vinegar that is post-emergent after it already has emerged from the seed and is growing that's going to kill the plant the problem is is it doesn't control the root development after the plant has already sprouted and so because cornmeal gluten unbeknownst to me was a pre-emergent it did nothing other than help you know the the Canada thistle basically laughed at me and I essentially wasted a bunch of time and money so that was not effective for that reason so after two long years of battling this weed that finally led us to our fourth and final way that eventually helped us to control these tenacious weeds and that's physical remov now I know this probably seems like the most obvious answer but the problem is is that a lot of gardeners when they turn to physical removal they do not actually stick with it doing it one time will basically sever the roots like I have here and all of the other roots that are remaining in the soil are going to continue to sprout the energy that this plant has created through photosynthesis is now in the roots and you might take this plant throw it in the trash do not compost it please do not compost uh tenacious weed they will continue to come back and proliferate but those roots are still remaining in the soil and then what happens is about a foot away you get another one and this pops up after a rain and you let it grow for a little bit and you might not notice it until it's grown and then the roots have grown into the soil and spread to another weed and so you go through and you remove all those and you think well I'm quite the clever Gardener I have solve the problem well that's where a lot of gardeners end up running into problems because now what you've done is you've taken three plants you severed them off and then they will fork and they will create six or nine plants and this might seem like a big problem but that's where continuous physical removal will eventually give you the upper hand and that's because as these plants start to produce they can only divide so many times and they can only be cut back so many times during the growing season before the root system starts to lose that precious ener energ that it creates through photosynthesis and so after the course of a full season we're talking a full season of every single day coming out and walking in the garden looking for any tiny little bit of growth identifying it and cutting it off not mulching it not giving it water not giving it vinegar not giving it cornmeal gluten not covering it up with cardboard sheet mulching hoping that it would go away only to have it researched somewhere else we're talking physical removal and being so ulous about it that we basically had to come out here with a magnifying glass and ultimately that is what has led us to being about 98 to 99% free and clear of Canada thistle in our garden and I am so glad that it's gone so we do still have Canada thistle in the garden but as I said it's in a much more manageable level and this has ultimately allowed me to enjoy so much more of my garden and to not have weeds taking over now Canada thistle is just like I said one small example and if I've learned anything it's that this tiny little weed can become an absolutely huge problem if you turn a blind eye to it or just hope that the problem will go away it will not it'll take advantage of you and it will absolutely make your life as a gardener a nightmare so stay up on it be persistent and the final thing are some ways to not even get it in the first place I'm going to talk about three ways that we got it in in the garden or three very potential ways that we got it in the garden and what we're going to do about it in the future so we don't have it happening again the first probable way we got into our garden is through bird seed now we love our neighbors so much and they love birds and that's okay it's just one of the risks you take when having bird seed near your garden is a lot of times bird seed does contain weed seeds and one of those weed seeds that's commonly in bird seed are thistle seeds so just keep that in mind if you have birds around or you feed the birds you may be inviting an unwanted uh very prolonged guest in your garden second probable cause and the one that I think is the most probable tainted mulch now if you go with free uh free wood chip mulch a lot of companies don't they don't screen their stuff they don't make sure that it's free of things like weeds and if they grind up a stump as well as mulch up your the tree or whatever they're taking care of all it takes is that teeny tiny little bit of root fragment to then get in your garden and start to spread like I said it only takes a tiny little bit of root fragment and then you got one plant and that one plant can turn into two or even three and the third and final way you can get invasive weeds in your garden is through tainted compost now compost is made from breaking down organic material and decomposing it to create food and soil for your garden problem is is if the source of that compost comes from things like yard waste or broken down weeds you can very easily get things like weed seeds or even root fragments in your compost now if the compost is heated up and the whole compost is very uh actively turned it gets nice and hot generally that heat above 110 to 120° should kill off most weed seeds and root fragments and fibers from you know from regenerating however if the uh you know if they survive that or if it's kept cold and not very actively turned it will still decompose but those seeds and those root fragments can they can lay dormant and uh and then they can resurge once you put them in the garden so I would always encourage you to just know your Source be very Vigilant about like I said when you take weeds out of your garden know what to put out the road versus what to compost I never under any circumstances compost any weed uh any weed material at all whether that's a dandelion a s thistle a Canada thistle any other type of weed it all goes into a bag out at the road I have enough organic material on the site here that I don't need to worry about those weeds that could then become a bigger problem later but just keep that in mind that that tiny little mistake could lead to a big mistake later on and a big problem so hopefully this helped you guys hopefully you all learned something new I know it's probably not the news you wanted to hear a lot of people want to just have a simple fix a simple solution but with some of these weeds there just is no simple solution and that's sometimes how it goes so I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you all learned something new and as always this is Luke from the M my Gardner Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care bye hey thank you so much for watching today's video I really appreciate it if you enjoyed consider checking this one out you'll probably enjoy it just as much I want to thank you so much for your viewership because without it this channel would not be as amazing as it is if you haven't subscribed yet it's free consider doing that we upload every Monday Wednesday and Friday rain or shine and if you need any garden tools supplies or seeds check out amig gardner.com we got you covered see you guys in the garden bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 312,240

Keywords: vegetable gardening, organic gardening, garden, gardening, growing food, vegetables, vegetable garden, tomatoes, how to grow, simple, sustainable, urban gardening, raised bed, permaculture, peppers, homesteading, homestead, simple living, garden tips, beginning gardener, first garden, seed starting, pepper, potato, carrot, onion, growing onions, growing carrots, growing cucumbers, grow from seed, compost, square foot gardening, migardener

Id: wd5OXWPsJOk

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024