Question for gardening guru's

[Aussiecajun]

Gday all. After a lot of procrastination, my wife and I just started our first garden. So far we have just planted some flowers for decoration, as well as some tomatoes, jalapeno's and habanero's to go along with the green onions we already had planted. The question I have is, what is the best product we can use to kill off the weeds but not harm the plants? Also, we get a lot of snails and slugs around, is there anything we can get to keep pests off the plants? We're both pretty new to gardening so any help is appreciated.

 

[tallwalker]

Not an expert here, but I don't know of any other way of dealing with the weeds but pine straw and good old fashioned weeding by the roots. As for snails and slugs, we use mayonaise lids with the cheapest malt liqour we can find in them. They crawl in and die happy I guess.

 

[Cat]

Are the pepper close by? They cross pollinate extremely easy. That said I loved my jalapeño bell peppers.

 

[Rollin Coal]

I spray the entire area with round up, let it die then chop the ground. I do this 3 time, it takes about 1 month to prep the ground properly. If you are using transplants you can put them in the ground and then use a chemical called Treflan it is a pre-emergent. You spray the area around your plants and incorporate the chemical into the soil. This will keep grass from growing in your garden but it will not effect your transplants. If you do your garden right the first time it will be an enjoyable venture, if you don't expect to spend a lot of time with your gardening tools.

 

[Aussiecajun]

Are the pepper close by? They cross pollinate extremely easy. That said I loved my jalapeño bell peppers.

Habanero's are in a seperate bed, but the bell peppers and jalapeno's are close by. If we end up with some spicy bell peppers, then no complaints from me! Wife might have something to say though lol.

 

[Aussiecajun]

I spray the entire area with round up, let it die then chop the ground. I do this 3 time, it takes about 1 month to prep the ground properly. If you are using transplants you can put them in the ground and then use a chemical called Treflan it is a pre-emergent. You spray the area around your plants and incorporate the chemical into the soil. This will keep grass from growing in your garden but it will not effect your transplants. If you do your garden right the first time it will be an enjoyable venture, if you don't expect to spend a lot of time with your gardening tools.

This was a "hey let's do it finally" type of thing so there was no preparation. All our plants were transplants so will look at Treflan.

 

[Hattrick 22]

I've been using preen with little success myself. Rollin do you think you can post up or even pm me a step by step process that has been proven?

 

[Spent Brass]

I just keep pulling the weeds. Once your garden plants are established they will out compete the weeds and you won't have to worry any more. Especially if they are spaced properly to shade the lee space and sun the veggies. Other than that, mulching, garden plastic, or planting ground cover is best. You can also border a garden with marigolds or junipers as they inhibit many species of weeds root growth.

 

[Labeeman]

There is a product called "Post" that you spray "over the top" that works on grass but not broad leaf weeds. There are many products with the same active ingredient as post that you can buy at nurseries and home improvement stores. The key is to use it when the weeds are small, if not it doesn't work too well. Like a previous poster said you can use a pre emergent such as Treflan but you have to be careful because it may affect future plantings because it last awhile. With all this being said I really think you need to learn the basics of gardening before you move into the realm of using herbicides to control your weeds. A good hoe, shovel, and weeding tools ( many different types) should be able to take care of the weeds that you have at least enough for the vege plants to get ahead of them. If it appears over whelming I would scale back some to get things under control. The use of mulch, compost and other techniques can help a bunch also. There are plenty of online publications at the LSU Ag Center website the cover gardening from A-Z.

 

[falshooter]

You should stay away from all chemicals controlling weeds and pest. No matter what the label says, these products will migrate into you edible food supply. Use mulch for controlling weeds and grass. There are plenty of natural pesticides and plants that produce their own pesticide and herbicides that compliment each other. There are plenty of "Natural" gardening websites. I recommend you go to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS website, or go to your local library and pick up and read some. This changed the way I garden 30 years ago.

 

[Spent Brass]

looks like I'm not the only anit-herbicide gardener around here

 

[PPBart]

Our garden consists of seven 4'x12' raised beds. The soil in each bed started out as garden soil from Clegg's Nursery. That stuff will hardly grow weeds for the first year or two -- too much wood chips in it, I think -- but eventually it breaks down into good soil (with some help). We've enriched the soil with composted manure and compost from our own garden/yard waste, plus I get an analysis done by LSU each spring, and appropriate corrections done. Each bed gets cleaned and spaded over each spring -- not much work there since we never step on the beds so the soil doesn't get packed down. We plant pretty much the same stuff each spring: tomatoes (several varieties, about 20 plants total), eggplants, white and yellow squash, cantalope, peppers (banana, bell and mild jalapeno), and cucumbers. We've got plenty of pine trees around, so pine straw is our primary mulch material. I don't like weeding, so when I see one popping up I usually just throw more straw on top of it. I'm not seriously averse to using chemicals, just don't seem to have a lot of need. Oh, and during winter I grow several varieties of lettuce.

 

[Aussiecajun]

Thanks for all the info. Going to leave the chemicals alone and just use some mulch to help keep the weeds down. Anything that makes it through will be easy to get rid of.