help needed with problematic flower bed

First of all, hello. I'm new here. I'm not a huge gardener but I do enjoy occasional potted flowers and fresh garden tomatoes.

I'm having a devil of a time with a long flower bed all along the side of my house - it is infested with weeds and grass. I don't mind a little weeding once in awhile, but this amount is killing me! Ever since we moved here 6 years ago I've been struggling with it. Now that I have a 16 month old, I just don't have the energy or the time to pull all of it every other week or so anymore and then try to recover physically from a sore back. Meanwhile, it looks pretty bad and it's depressing. I like a few potted plants outside but what I need is very low to no maintenance.

A few years ago, we put down black netting and then put down thousands of small stones but it didn't help keep the weeds and grass from coming back. Now I have stones with grass and weeds coming up through the stones!

I heard about using wet newspapers as a barrier to kill weeds and then wood mulch over the newspapers. Would it make sense to do this right over the stones we already have? I don't want to ask my husband to remove all those stones - he wouldn't be too happy.

Then I thought of transplanting some hastas from our backyard to fill in the emptiness and perhaps those would spread and take over and kill off weeds ( or at least cover the areas) so it would be maintenance free. But I assume I would have to leave some space open from newspapers so that the hastas can spread and grow. Any thoughts? What would you do at this point? Thanks.

Good morning Julepeace. I am pretty new at this too. But if you send pictures we can get a better idea of what you are dealing with. Is the area shady or full sun? Are the plants close together?

I was going through the same problem you can see my pictures on the beginning landscape forum. And I got so sick of the weeds I tried two things.

I bought a flamer. Which is just a little torch that plumbers use with an attachment. If your plants aren't close together you can flame the weeds. You don't burn them you kind of just dry up the water cells. The weeds just whither away in a few hours sometimes it takes until the next day. Depending on the size of the weeds you may have to do it one or two times to get down to the roots of the weeds. The flamer is also great for little weedy patches in your lawn.

For me the flamer did work but my area it just too big to keep up with weeds so I ended up flaming them and then picking up the weeds and laying the black landscaping paper down ( which means I lost about 20 daffodil plants)and then I mulched. I planted ivy as the ground cover because a year after planting it grows 6 to 10 feet. But since being on Dave's I have learned that I really have to maintain it because it could kill my flowers if I don't trim. So I may replace the ivy with thyme. But I love ground cover because once they come in you don't really have to do much weeding. I like you don't mind weeding but it can be overwhelming when there are too many!!!

Good luck!

Julepeace,

You can put down black vinyl and stake it for the season and then replant next year, but I think the hostas, if you water and feed them regularly, will fill in and take over. You might have to pull out the taller ones. And yes, you do need to leave space, but you can plant too many to start and pull some out later and transplant them somewhere else if you plan. Or you can trade or give those away.

One last thing, I'm assuming these are run of the mill weeds. If it's japanese knotweed or something like that.... drastic measures would be in order.

Oh, and once you get the weeds taken care of, you can use Preen to keep weeds from sprouting. I'm new to this too, and I've never used it myself, but from the sounds of it, it works. It kills the seeds before they sprout. That being said, if you want to be able to plant flower seeds in that bed, it would kill those as well, but from what I've heard it doesn't kill already established plants. You can find it at Lowe's, Walmart, or just about anywhere I think. Just a thought!

Kristie

Can you send a picture of what type of weeds you are not getting rid of, that would let us all see the weeds and tell you how to get rid, to be honest, if you have perennial weeds and you are breaking off the tops when you do weed, then you are just pruning them and they come back even stronger, if they are annual weeds, then you really need to try get weeding them out before they set seeds as this is what annuals do, seeds grow, then flower and set seeds for the next season to exists, there is nothing more disheartening than never getting an area cleared, but if you even describe the weed or weeds we could help you more, you need to be careful what chemicals you use in the garden especially now you have a baby around, there are lots of ways to combat weeds once you know what type they are. good luck. WeeNel.