Tired of friends/neighbors who are newbies to gardening telling you How to garden?

[seedcorn]

Mine is my wife..... She causes more problems than help.... instead of pulling weeds, she cuts off the tops making the roots stronger and harder to pull. The more I try to explain what problems she causes, the more she does it! Just because her mom had a few plants, she thinks she can garden.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

^^ exactly like hubs. He pulls the tops off and doesn't dig the roots out. He now argues with me about how to garden, when in fact he's never had a garden. AAUUGHHHH

 

[Ridgerunner]

Tired of friends/neighbors who are newbies to gardening telling you How to garden?​

Nope. I'm married so I'm used to that as an everyday thing in everything.

 

[flowerbug]

^^ exactly like hubs. He pulls the tops off and doesn't dig the roots out. He now argues with me about how to garden, when in fact he's never had a garden. AAUUGHHHH

it will work if applied consistently enough - it's just very rare that most people can do this consistently enough. the stirrup hoe is pretty much that concept worked in metal and wood. very efficient, but you do have to use it to get results.

 

[digitS']

I once had a neighbor who used his lawn mower in the garden on the weeds.

Sure, I can understand doing that if there is a follow-up with another tool.

He only followed up with the lawnmower. I'm sure he considered it an entirely wasted effort to have planted anything. I was there for 7 years and he only had a garden that once.

Steve

 

[meadow]

it will work if applied consistently enough

Unless you're weeding quackgrass!

I love stirrup hoes. Of course I have to go through and remove any bits of quackgrass first, but cutting them off at the surface is my preferred method if there are more than a few weeds.

Just got a new hoe that works on the same principle but is not a stirrup hoe. Haven't tried it yet but DH loves it (he hates stirrup hoes) and I've not even had a chance to test it out. Probably the best purchase ever! It's called a "Push-Pull Hoe."

 

[meadow]

I once had a neighbor who used his lawn mower in the garden on the weeds.

Sure, I can understand doing that if there is a follow-up with another tool.

He only followed up with the lawnmower. I'm sure he considered it an entirely wasted effort to have planted anything. I was there for 7 years and he only had a garden that once.

Steve

I need a "???" or "huh?" icon for that one!

 

[digitS']

What isn't understood, @meadow?

Or, is it just that you find it somewhat unbelievable that someone would do that?

Honestly, I don't know of any neighbors here at home who have a garden with one exception. I had hopes for another neighbor but they quickly replaced their garden after 1 season with a yard toy and a junk car.

 

[meadow]

Or, is it just that you find it somewhat unbelievable that someone would do that?

Bingo! I'm surprised anyone would think mowing would be effective weed control. Well, unless they are only concerned about controlling the height? I suppose there are different forms of weed control.

 

[Zeedman]

I once had a neighbor who used his lawn mower in the garden on the weeds.

Sadly, I've been that gardener in 2020 & 2021 - but not through choice, or sloth. After record rainfall forced my rural garden into being fallow for 2018/2019, the weed pressure there defied the best efforts of DW & I to keep it under control. With about 10 weeds per square inch & 10,000 square feet of garden (do the math ) we were losing ground. I had to mow between rows just to keep most of the weeds from going to seed. A lot of that growth was purslane, and it was so wet & dense that it kept clogging the mower. A little better last year, when with DD's help we cleared the whole garden in June... but a late sprout of crab grass sprung up, which we were only partially able to clear. With seed heads beginning to emerge, I had to mow the remaining patches (using the bagger) just to minimize further seed production.

That included mowing over the gherkin patch, since it was impossible to weed between the vines at that point. The gherkin vines had rooted, clung tightly to the ground, and were mostly undamaged.