When you have a vegetable garden or flower garden, you find yourself pulling weeds eventually. Depending on where you live, and what kind of grass you have you may get some surprisingly large weeds in your lawn too. In any case, you need to keep your vegetables growing strong and your yard and flower gardens looking their best. You pull the weeds, but then what? You may find yourself wondering what to do with pulled weeds?
What To Do With Pulled Weeds
In this article we’ll go over some of the options on what to do with pulled weeds. We’ve also included some tips for keeping your lawn and garden as weed free as possible. Oftentimes when you’re trying to grow grass thicker, weeds will arise too. Weeds are a part of nature. Therefore, they are often unpreventable but there are some ways to mitigate their growth in your backyard.
Option #1: Dispose In Trash Collection
The first thing many suburban homeowners do is simply throw the weeds in the trash. Yes, you can certainly do this in most locations, but it’s not the best. You are taking an organic product and needlessly bulking the landfill with it.
If your community has a compost or lawn clipping pickup program, check that out first. Oftentimes the program will require you to sign up, and they’ll give you a small compost container. Sometimes they’ll just ask you to put out the compostable lawn clippings, sticks and branches in an obvious container on trash day for the compost truck to pick up.
Option #2: Create A Compost Pile
Not all communities have a community compost yet, and that’s okay. You can certainly create your own compost pile. The old fashioned way is to simply create a pile someplace in your yard either surrounded by chicken wire or otherwise where you throw all your lawn clippings and weeds.
We’d suggest you buy an enclosed compost container for the best experience. What happens when you have an open compost pit is the weeds simply re-root and grow in the compost pit. Granted, they’re out of sight, and out of mind, but you’re not going to be able to reclaim the nutrients in the weeds if they’re growing!
Enclosed compost containers also have the benefit of not smelling as bad since the smell is enclosed. However, when you open them up, be prepared. By keeping your pulled weeds in the enclosed compost bin, it will accelerate the breakdown of the weeds by the bacteria into a healthy soil which you can use when planting the next year.
How To Prevent Weeds From Growing In Your Backyard
When pulling weeds, it’s important to try and pull them when they’re young. This will prevent them from going to seed, and spreading. Unfortunately, many of the most common weeds quickly go to seed, and you can miss it if you’re not paying close attention to your lawn and garden. This is where a good quality weed puller comes in handy. Especially when pulling weeds from your lawn, it can feel like you can never get a good hold on the weeds. You pull the top off the weed but can’t get underneath it to pull the roots.
This is where a purpose built weed puller can come in handy. Weed pullers have multiple prongs on the end of a pole with a lever sticking out one side for your foot to twist. You push the prongs over the weed, and then twist with your foot on the lever. This pulls not only the visible vegetation of the weed, but gets a good portion of the root system as well. You’ll never truly pull the complete weed root system out of the ground as they generally break off. However, at least try to get the main root ball out with the vegetation. Then, you’ll prevent an instant pop up of the weed in the coming weeks.
Chemical weed killer treatments are useful in some circumstances. However, be careful when using chemical weed killers near a vegetable garden or if you put your lawn clippings in your compost for the vegetable garden. Oftentimes you can minimize weed growth by mowing the lawn more often and preventing weed shoots from getting beyond lawn height. Regular pulling of the weeds combined with regular mowing can prevent the lion’s share of weed problems.
What To Do With Pulled Weeds Summary
Hopefully this article has been helpful in determining what to do with pulled weeds. Weeds are a part of life when you have a lawn and garden, and we’d suggest doing your best to incorporate them into your gardening plan by creating a compost system of your own. However, maybe you don’t want to fuss with a compost. Putting them out on the street for the community compost pickup isn’t a bad idea either.
