If your gorgeous field or garden is infested with weeds, then you need to learn the various advantages of weeding to help you practice proper weed control. You see, weeds are like pests. Their main purpose is to rob your crop’s yield potential by denying it complete access to vital nutrients, moisture, and light.
Like it’s not enough, weeds carry a host of pathogens and damaging insects that can cause potential harm to your crops. They can also block the drainage pipes, restrict crop growth, increase manual labor in your farm, and finally, they can insulate the soil surface by forming a layer that can potentially increase frost risk.
So, if you’re reading this post and you’re suffering from continuous garden chaos caused by weeds, then this post will give you every reason to practice weed control by highlighting some perceived benefits.
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Importance of Weeding
1. There’s Less Competition for Water and Nutrients
Most of you are family men and women. Now, imagine cooking delicious meals for your family then suddenly your neighbors appear eyeing for a share of the same food you had prepared for your family. Here, the quantity of food will not change. However, the number of stomachs eyeing to have a share of the food will increase meaning everyone will have a small share which might not be enough.
This example is a clear demonstration of what happens to your crops when the farm is infested with weed. Here, the soil is the food your crops are likely to feed on to benefit from the vital nutrients and moisture. But, soil biology is only intended to transport a specific amount of nutrients which is to be shared by all the plants.
So, when there are weeds around, your plants will definitely compete for food. However, if you practice proper weed control, your plants are likely to be healthy and more nutrient-dense making them more nourished at the end.
2. Your Crops Will Get Enough Sunlight
Just like in the animal kingdom, your garden too can become a ring where the rule of “survival for the fittest” applies. You see, weeds grow more aggressively than your crops. Therefore, they tend to grow taller about two times more than your crops.
Since there are finite resources such as water and space to compete for, your garden is likely to get crowded causing a chaotic environment. Once your native plants get totally overwhelmed, these weeds will deny your crops sufficient sunlight by blocking sun rays from reaching the bottom.
However, weeds can, at some point, be an advantage when you’re planning your garden layout. Since they block the sun from getting to the ground, they cause the plants to be too cool in the morning and evening hours thus preventing your crops from losing too much water.
3. Weeds Can Hide Your Crops
As we mentioned earlier, weeds grow aggressively meaning they can invade your garden and block your crops from getting enough sunlight, nutrients, and water. Once they become taller, weeds can easily block your crops making it extremely difficult to locate them.
Once your garden is crowded, your crops’ flowers will be denied easy access from pollinators such as cross-pollination and beneficial insects that pass pollen from one flower to the other. On the other hand, in case the weeds become too attractive to pollinators, then your crops will be denied the pollen, which if you didn’t know, can provide adequate food to your crops during the flowering phase.
4. Weeds Can Camouflage Pests and Diseases
Apart from hiding your crops in a thick forest full of weeds, weeds can also camouflage or rather hide symptoms of dangerous pests and diseases that can infest your crops causing poor yield. Additionally, some weeds behave like parasites (commonly known as parasitic weeds) which can damage your plants by feeding on its vital nutrients and water leaving it completely weak or dead at some point.
So, to avoid any of these issues, it’s a good practice to control weed the first time you see their signs to prevent them from overgrowing. Also, if you detect pests or diseases, examine your garden early enough to know when you can spray a pesticide to eliminate the eggs before they hatch.
5. There’s Easy Root Penetration
Another importance of weeding is that it allows easy root penetration. You see, when crops are competing for space with weeds, this competition goes down to the root zone where your crops become stressed hence easily susceptible to pests and diseases.
Some roots such as tomato roots can penetrate deep into the soil if the condition and nature of the soil allow them. However, with weeds around, such crops are unable to penetrate efficiently making them extremely weak.
So, to solve this issue, practicing weed control by double digging your garden can really help as it helps to dig over the hard subsoil at the top allowing your roots to penetrate deeper in search of water and nutrients.
6. Helps to Improve Soil Fertility and Structure
Growing the same crop on the same piece of land year after year will only disappoint you even more. Do you know why? Because you’ll only encourage the growth of resistant weeds that will be difficult to control.
So, to get rid of such weeds completely, you can opt to practice crop rotation by cultivating different types of crops in various pieces of land then rotating them the following reason. A simple but effective rotation you can consider is rotating maize/beans with legumes, cereals, and legumes.
By rotating your crops, you not only control weeds, pests, and diseases but you also help to build up soil fertility and structure as some of these crops are good in adding organic matter to the soil.
Conclusion
That’s all for now. If you’ve been struggling with weed control in your farm or garden, then this post has offered you everything you need to know. Now, farming is not an easy endeavor. It requires you to follow a lot of tiring steps from start to finish if you really look to have a bumper harvest.
Starting clean by double digging your garden to eliminate every bit of weed is one way of controlling weeds. However, weeds will always find a way in your farm throughout the different growth cycles of your crops.
Since they grow aggressively, weeds can deprive your crops of vital nutrients, water, and sunlight putting them under high pressure. So, to avoid this, weed control is a vital necessity you can’t afford to bypass.