During the summer months, weeds can become a particular problem. While the warmer weather, combined with the rainy days that we have come to enjoy as a typical British summer, are ideal growing conditions for plants and flowers, they are also ideal growing conditions for pesky weeds which clutter your garden and can be harmful too.

Weeding your garden can be time-consuming, and even the most avid gardeners would agree that they’d rather spend their time tending to their beloved plants and flowers rather than having to spend their precious gardening time trying to keep on top of weeds.

So naturally, the ideal solution is not to have to pull out weeds, but to prevent them from growing in the first place!

While it might be impossible to completely eradicate weeds from your garden, there are certainly some things you can do to ensure they are kept to a minimum.

So if you want to prevent weeds from taking over your garden, try these helpful tips.

Try not to disturb the soil.

Many weeds live below the surface of your garden, and if left undisturbed are unlikely to see the light of day. While it may be necessary to turn over soil from time to time keep it from compacting, done too frequently and you risk exposing weed seeds to sunlight and stirring them into action! Instead, a high-quality organic mulch can do the trick and will encourage earthworms to keep the soil loose and nutrient rich – with the minimum input from you.

Suppressing weeds with a mulch is extremely useful when it comes to weed prevention. Mulches effectively smother weed seeds in the soil, preventing them from rising to the surface and being exposed to sunlight. Mulches also have the benefit of keeping the soil cool and helping it to retain moisture. Late spring is an ideal time to do this.

Weed at optimum times

If weeds to appear in your garden, to make life easier for yourself it’s a good idea to do so after a heavy downpour. When the soil is soft and wet, it will be less difficult when pulling out even more stubborn, deep rooted weeds, and can ensure you get the whole weed out, rather than breaking off the top part, only to discover a regrowth a week later!

Choose close plant spacing

If you plant the plants, shrubs and flowers you do want in your garden close together, there will be fewer gaps for those pesky weeds to emerge. When thinking about your garden design, choose plants that compliment one another and it won’t look like you have squeezed in too many.

Careful watering

Another way to prevent weeds from taking over is to avoid giving them the care they need to grow! Be careful to water the plants you want to flourish while depriving weeds of the same. Drip or soaker hoses, placed beneath a layer of mulch can work wonders, and depriving weeds of water can reduce weed-seed germination by 50 to 70 percent, so it’s definitely worth a try!

Using the above strategies can help dramatically reduce the number of weeds appearing in your garden and provide you with effective solutions to making them easier to remove when they do. So if you want to prevent weeds from taking over your garden this summer, why not give them a try?!