Learn how to get rid of weeds naturally. Weeds can quickly take over your vegetable garden, and you don't want to use chemicals near your food. Here are several ways to keep weeds under control without using chemicals.

How To Keep Weeds Out Of The Garden Naturally

As a hobby, gardening can be very rewarding. However, many new gardeners are often taken by surprise by how irritating weeds can get to be. Weeds can be harmful to both your garden, as well as your enjoyment of gardening as a whole.

Further, trying to stay on top of the weeds can seem impossible at times. Weeds prevent nutrients from reaching your plants, essentially depriving them of what they need to grow. For this reason, it is incredibly important to control weeds in your garden as much as possible.

Following are some tips and tricks to help control the weed population in your garden and teach you how to get rid of weeds in the garden. Learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden naturally is a great skill, and the natural route is one I suggest taking. I recommend taking the ideas that work and using them in tandem with one another for maximum efficiency.

Eliminating weeds is one thing, but you may be wondering how to keep weeds out of the garden naturally.

For more gardening tips and advice, check out these posts:

I recommend keeping a gardening planner to help you plan your garden and keep track of notes year after year.

How to Prevent Weeds From Growing

One of the best ways to control weeds is to eliminate their chances of growing in the first place. For this to be effective, you will need to balance the space in your garden. You need to provide adequate space for your plants to grow, but not enough for weeds to grow in.

I recommend using a cover of eco-friendly material and cutting slots for your plants to grow through. You can also spread newspapers or even stones and rocks to prevent weeds from growing.

The newspaper method is effective, and they can be gotten rid of once your plants are large enough to be identifiable at a glance. At this point, you can weed without the fear of accidentally weeding your own plants.

Using covers can be an effective tool to keep weeds from ever sprouting up in your garden. Following are some more ways to prevent weeds from growing.

Cornmeal

Our first tip in learning how to keep weeds out of the garden naturally is one you may not have thought of. When learning how to get rid of weeds in the garden many of the solutions might take you by surprise.

When spread around a garden, cornmeal will actually prevent the germination process from happening. This will effectively prevent weeds from sprouting up in your garden.

Be warned, however, that it will also stop your seeds from growing. It is important to allow some time for your seeds and starters to grow before using cornmeal.

Cornmeal can thankfully be bought fairly inexpensively, and in large quantities. Further, it is a food safe product and will not affect the plants that have already passed the germination stage. For these reasons, it is a phenomenal way to inhibit weeds naturally before they become an issue.

Mulch

When learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden, mulch is one of the more popular tips.

Mulch is another example of a great cover material that can stop weeds from sprouting up. Mulch can help keep your plants hydrated while simultaneously preventing the necessary sunlight from getting to weeds. This eliminates them before they can become an issue.

I recommend spreading around about two inches of mulch in your garden, but only after your plants have started to sprout.

Be careful as to not get mulch on your plants as it will inhibit their growth. Further, it will dry out grass so be careful when spreading it around.

Make Larger Aisles

If you have the space, creating larger aisles can help you later on when you go to weed. With wider aisles it is easier to get power tools and machines into the garden to help you eliminate weeds.

Further, it is easier for you to weed without fear of harming your plants. However, wider aisles also means more space for weeds to grow, so keep that in mind.

Often, learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden is about balance between your plants and the weeds.

If you are fortunate enough to have the extra space, you can always create larger aisles in between your rows of plants. This will help you when you do weed later on. It is much easier to use power tools and other machines in the garden with larger aisles.

Additionally, you can weed without the fear of harming your own plants. Keep in mind, though, that more space in the aisle will also give weeds more space to grow.

How To Eliminate Weeds After They Are Grown

Despite your best efforts for preventing weeds, some will pop up. It's inevitable if you have a garden!

Here's how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden naturally once they've started to grow.

Lemon Juice

Similar to vinegar, which we will discuss later, using lemon juice to spray weeds can be a great way to control the weed population of your garden.

It is important to use real lemon juice which can be either bought at the store or gained from juicing lemons.

You can also combine lemon juice with vinegar for a potent weed killer. By itself, lemon juice will take a day or so before you start to see a decline in the amount of weeds in your garden. However, once it starts working it is incredibly effective.

Boiling Water

Surprisingly, boiling water can be an incredibly tenacious weed killer when directly applied onto weeds. My grandmother, who was young during the depression, saved any water that she boiled to pour onto her sidewalk to kill weeds that may pop through the cracks.

To do this, simply boil a pot of water until it is roaring. Then, carefully take it out to the garden and dump it directly onto the weeds.

Safety here is a must, so I highly recommend wearing long pants as well as closed toe shoes. You must always be careful about pouring, and don’t worry as you can take your time and still see results. Be careful and don’t endanger yourself or your plants.

When it comes to learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden, the safety of yourself and your plants is a must.

Salt

When learning how to get rid of weeds in the garden, it is nice to know that oftentimes the solutions can be made with items you probably already have. This is one of those cases.

On its own, table salt can be used as an effective weed killer, over time of course. By simply spreading salt around the base of the seeds and allowing it to sit and work over time, you can greatly reduce the amount of weeds in your garden.

It is important to note, however, that salt will make the soil unusable for a while, so I recommend being strategic as to how you apply this tip. Further, you will need to check on the progress of the salt and add more as necessary as it will naturally be diluted over time.

This tip is a bit of a slow burner when it comes to learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden naturally. However, it is worth it as it is very easy to focus on specific parts of the garden when applying salt.

Vinegar

Vinegar is a great and natural way to eliminate weeds in and around your garden. To use vinegar, use a spray bottle and spritz the bases of the weeds every morning.

to be careful as to not get any vinegar on your other plants, as it will just as effectively kill them.

Personally, I would advise using vinegar to eliminate large batches of weeds and use another tip or weed by hand to get rid of the weeds surrounding your plants.

I also recommend not using vinegar on a windy day as it can blow into something important such as another plant.

As a bonus tip, you can also mix regular table salt or dish soap into the spray bottle for a more potent and effective weeding solution. You can also mix in both table salt and dish soap. This solution is great as it is incredibly easy to make, and it is rather inexpensive.

You can even buy especially potent vinegars at gardening stores. These brands will be a lot better at eliminating weeds, and do not cost much more than standard vinegar. This is one of the most effective tips when learning how to get rid of weeds in the vegetable garden naturally.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of tips that can help you learn how to keep weeds out of the garden naturally.

Reducing the weed population of your garden may seem like a near impossible task, but it is possible to do! There are a plethora of ways to reduce the amount of weeds in your garden which can be done by stopping them from growing in the first place.

There are also plenty of ways to quickly and safely get rid of weeds once they are in your garden. With the tips on this list, you can efficiently get control of the weed situation in your garden and learn how to get rid of weeds in the garden.

Plus, you will have peace of mind in knowing that all of these tips are natural solutions. With the help of this guide, you too can have a beautiful, weed free garden.

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How to Get Rid of Weeds in Vegetable Garden Naturally

How To Keep Weeds Out Of The Garden Naturally