A GROWING CONCERN: Getting to the root of a weed problem

Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 27, 2026

WEEDS DESIRE YOUR garden and will do whatever it takes to overrun it.

This past spring was ideal for germination. Seeds, any kind of seeds, need moisture to germinate, and rain or intermittent showers have been around this year.

With the sun being out and beating down while we passed the summer solstice last Sunday, the soil surface was warm and inviting. Temperature, in our case, and the heat of the last few days just added now to their germination. And now these hot temperatures are keeping us away from our garden, giving weeds an opportunity to thrive well into summer.

By our not being out in the yard planting, mulching and cultivating, weeds and their seeds are taking the opportunity to establish a reinforced beachhead. There are several things we can do.

First, go out there and cultivate, eradicate and remove the weeds. Weeds are born pregnant. If you eliminate the first generation, the end result this fall, a few generations from now, will be literally tens if not thousands of times fewer weeds around.

Get weeds before they flower or produce seed. Scotch broom is blooming now. If you can’t pull them out, at least cut off their flowers — no flowers means no reproduction.

Minimize bare ground and disturb soil as little as possible. Weed seed can develop only in bare ground exposed to sun and rain.

Mulch the areas well between your landscape trees and bushes. This is where weeds will thrive. Mulch is acidic, meaning it sup-presses germination. Weeds pull out easily from mulch applied at the recommended coverage of no less than 4 inches, preferably 6 or 8 inches deep.

When pulling weeds, realize that you have now just left a humongous area of freshly loosened soil for more weeds to come in and dominate. In a lawn, pull up a dandelion, put down a handful of good topsoil mixed with grass seeds, or you will have more dandelions in the spot where there was one.

Let your grass grow 3 inches or higher to shade out weeds as well.

In a vegetable garden, replant or reseed an area with new vegetables or greens, or replace it with flowers. Always cover with mulch and replant or hoe continuously any bare areas, or you will actually be increasing the number of weeds by your own actions.

Attack weeds on a manageable schedule that doesn’t cause you to give up or view the job as impossible — 3,000 weeds throughout your lawn can be a daunting task, but if 100 are dealt with each day, then in one month, the problem is solved.

Getting weeds while they are young is immensely easier than when they have matured, because they are not well-established. Young weeds have a small root system that makes them much easier to pull out.

Weeds like dandelions, thistle or Scotch broom do not send down the taproot for weeks after their birth. That is when one should yank them out.

Many of these types of weeds are those with rhizomes (or roots with nodes) like horsetail, and to incompletely pull them out or just breaking off the top just pinches them. That pinch causes a Medusa head to appear, which is harder to pull out because it will branch out with the roots lower in the ground.

Worst, pinching will cause the plant to grow more flowers, which is far more potential weeds than before.

In wrapping up this week’s column, let us all contemplate our yard, lawn and garden and our own garden techniques as they relate to weed production. I do not want your actions to cause more weeds than would naturally exist.

Take some time to exist and enjoy our beautiful Olympics here — trails, coastline forest and mountains. It will do well for your spirit. And please … stay well all!

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Andrew May is a freelance writer and ornamental horticulturist who dreams of having Clallam and Jefferson counties nationally recognized as “Flower Peninsula USA.” Send him questions c/o Peninsula Daily News, P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362, or email news@peninsuladailynews.com (subject line: Andrew May).