Monty Don gives advice on how to keep weeds 'under control'
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Monty Don is a British gardener, horticulturist, and writer best known for co-presenting BBC’s Gardeners’ World. Monty often shares gardening tricks and tips on his social media channels, including how to prevent and get rid of weeds in your garden.
Every week, Monty shares a video on his Twitter account of things to do in your garden that day.
In one of his latest videos, the Gardeners’ World host demonstrated the best way to get rid of weeds from your garden.
There are plenty of chemical solutions available in shops and gardening centres to get rid of weeds, but these can cause harm to other plants and the surrounding wildlife.
Using natural methods to control weeds is better for flora and fauna, as well as for the environment in general.
Monty’s top tip was to use a hoe, especially when controlling the weeds in your vegetable patch.
He said: “One of the reasons why we grow vegetables in rows is because that makes them easier to hoe.
“And hoeing is the best way to keep on top of weeds in the vegetable garden.”
The horticulturist recommended using a “sharp hoe” to make it easier to get rid of the weeds.
He continued: “I sharpen mine with a wet stone or a file.
“And then just slide it along under the surface of the soil, cutting off the weeds at their roots.”
Monty advised weeding when the soil is dry.
He said: “Do it on a dry day so that the weeds will wither on the surface and they can be gathered up and taken to the compost heap.”
Using a hoe is not only the best way to get rid of weeds from a vegetable patch, but from other areas of your garden too.
In a previous episode of Gardeners’ World, the host shared how to weed a wildflower area.
He explained how to identify and remove dock, hemlock, and sow thistle, which are the most common weeds in a wildflower patch.
You can remove these weeds with a hoe, but Monty warned gardeners to “wear gloves” when doing this with hemlock as the plant is “quite poisonous”.
The gardening expert said: “A wildflower meadow needs careful tending. It needs gardening.
“You do need to let the plants that you want to keep seed and to make sure that the plants you don’t want to keep don’t seed.
“This dock is developing seeds and I don’t want those to spread.
“I can put the hoe down at the base of the plant and jab in like that.
“That cuts it off at the roots, I can pull it out and more importantly, the seeds won’t spread and germinate.”
Monty added: “This plant here is hemlock. It’s poisonous, really quite poisonous.
“You can tell – it’s got these lovely, white umbellifer flowers and then the very distinctive, purple blotchy stem.
“If you have got it, I’d wear gloves when you’re handling it.”
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