Is there something safe to add to my garden beds to get rid of these weeds? Every year I have this issue and it’s getting hard to keep pulling them. Throughout the summer it gets like this as well. Even my flower beds get this bad.
flowerbug
Garden Master
often it takes more than one approach to reduce weed populations in gardens.
from what i can tell from your pictures it doesn't look like you have much of an edge or border area which would prevent the spread of weeds from the surrounding area into the garden. even with a good border you will still get weed seeds blown in, but at least you do prevent some of them.
the other approaches i use are smothering some places if they are bad, low or no-till to prevent stirring weed seeds around.
regular use of a stirrup hoe (preventing weeds from going to seed to begin with).
mulches and weed barrier fabric or cardboard layers under the mulch reduce weed pressure for several years but eventually they have to be worked on a bit to restore them to that. it takes us about 5yrs in most perennial gardens so we have to redo some every year or three.
there's really nothing that is work free forever in gardening. even rock mulches can eventually get too much dirt in them and then you have weeds starting to sprout again.
Zeedman
Garden Master
Ditto on the good advice from @flowerbug . Parts of your garden actually don't appear to be too bad - just annual weeds which are relatively easy to kill (although their seeds may continue to come up). Provided they have not gone to seed, those weeds can just be hoed & left to dry.
Hard to tell for sure from the photos, but the weeds on the garden border appear to be some type of thistle or similar root-spreading weed. If that is the case, eradication of those is best done by a combination of hoeing the tops, then smothering them with an opaque barrier to kill any new shoots which emerge. Perennial weeds can be very persistent, so you just have to be more determined than they are.
If you are diligent, the roots eventually run out of energy & die. It took me 2-3 years to eliminate thistle from my gardens. The fight is made easier if you add a border of bare ground wherever perennial weeds are present, to prevent them from creeping back in from the edges,
Hard to tell for sure from the photos, but the weeds on the garden border appear to be some type of thistle or similar root-spreading weed. If that is the case, eradication of those is best done by a combination of hoeing the tops, then smothering them with an opaque barrier to kill any new shoots which emerge. Perennial weeds can be very persistent, so you just have to be more determined than they are.
If you are diligent, the roots eventually run out of energy & die. It took me 2-3 years to eliminate thistle from my gardens. The fight is made easier if you add a border of bare ground wherever perennial weeds are present, to prevent them from creeping back in from the edges,
