I give up-the weeds invade my flower beds, even after pulling them and mulching. They seem well-adapted to drought-we have had very little rain here in April, and yet the weeds flourish. They even push their way through landscape cloth with 4 inches of gravel on top. In most places, you an put in a flower bed, and enjoy it for years-here, you pant it, and the weeds invade in the first year. The weeds are deep-rooted (hard to kill unless you get the whole thing), and prolific in throwing seeds-they seem to spread every day. And commercial weed killers do not seem to help-many of them turn brown for a while-then resume growing.
What can I plant that will block these horrible weeds?
When used with landscape cloth Round Up will* eventually *kill your weeds. So will individually painting them with bleach. If I correctly recall the bleach is the only thing that worked on the joe pye weed.
It is largely an act of frustration, though, and it took two and a half years of dedicated weed killing to convert formerly completely untamed sections along the end of my road into significantly less maintenance heavy flowerbeds.
More rocks, of course.
Mint of course!
Of course some people consider it a horrible weed, which it is, but at least it’s edible and has pretty flowers.
You’ll have to give up part of your garden for a while, but solarizing kills weed like nothing else.
In essence, you cover your garden over with clear plastic, and basically let the sun steam/bake the weeds under the plastic.
Unless, like I am, you’re dealing with bindweed vines. Nothing kills them. When you pull the vines out, any root remnants grow into new vines. And now they’re in my lawn. When I cut the grass, I’m basically helping the bidweeds to reproduce. Sure, I could use weed killer, but then I’d be killing everything else too.
This is exactly what I’m dealing with now too. After some pool work trashed a bed I hoe’d it clean, applied week killer when stuff first started sprouting, laid weedblock fabric down, mulched very heavily (5-6") and then planted weeks later. Now I’ve still got some thin grass and blackberry vines poking through. Amazing. I guess I’ll keep selectively spraying with Roundup, using a piece of cardboard to keep it off the Gaura I want saved and eventually it’ll get there but what an extended chore it can be.