The Best Way To Pick Weeds Out Of Dry Soil After A Heat Wave

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Gardeners have lots of ways to deal with dreaded weeds these days, but sometimes, good, old-fashioned hand-pulling is the best route, especially if a weed is very close to a plant you're growing. But, if you've ever tried to pull weeds out of extremely dry, hard soil, you know it can feel like an exercise in futility as the plant snaps off in your hand and the roots are left in the clutches of the baked soil. And you know what that means — the pesky weed can grow back.

The trick to easier hand-weeding under these conditions — so you can dig out deeply rooted plants — is to moisten the soil. It should be damp, not wet. You can dampen the soil with a regular or soaker hose (Bonus! Installing a soaker hose could save you thousands when selling your home) or with a drip irrigation system. Another option is to coordinate your watering days with your weeding days. Do your usual watering, and then wait half an hour for the soil to absorb the water before weeding. You could even time your weeding to the rain forecast if it regularly rains in your area.

Once you've moistened the soil, use a handfork to further break it up and extract entire weeds with their roots using a manual weeder to grasp the weed and raise the root out of the soil. Other hand tools that can help in the endeavor include a dandelion/forked weeder, a digging bar, a garden fork or spading fork, and a hori-hori soil knife, such as the Nisaku Namibagata Hori.

For a lasting solution, the key to keeping weeds at bay is in how you water your garden. If you automate your plant watering by installing an individual drip irrigation system, you will be directing water precisely to the plants that need it, instead of watering everything in the range of your sprinkler. This reduces the number of weeds growing in your garden, and when they do pop up, you can easily dampen the soil to weed them out.