Cutting corners leads to more work later on> Gardener breaks cardinal sod rule

I have committed the cardinal sin of gardeners, and now I’m paying for it.

“What heinous crime could she have committed now?” you ask, knowing my track record with house and potted plants.

Well, I’m afraid I must hang my head especially low for this confession, because I didn’t practice what I preached: I didn’t kill the sod.

Over the past three years, I must have written a half-dozen articles about breaking new ground for garden beds, but I thought that when I went to do just that this spring, I could cut a few corners.

It was a dumb mistake.

I picked out a spot in my yard for two raised beds. I carefully marked them off with string and took great pains to cut straight lines with my sod cutter. I flipped the turf over to expose the roots and dry the soil. I should have followed convention by shaking out the dry soil and removing the sod completely, but I thought that I could get away with just adding a hearty layer of soil and composted sheep manure on top of the dying turf before planting my seedlings.

I was very pleased with my tactic — for about a week. Then little blades of quack grass started poking their nosy little heads up, first sparsely, and then after a good bout of heat, with a more threatening density. Now, nearly every morning finds me out in the yard pointlessly plucking them up. And every morning I think of the phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

When it comes to weeds and weeding, I have found some solace in Barbara Pleasant’s “The Gardener’s Weed Book: Earth-Safe Controls.” Like most summer reading, this book isn’t for sitting back and soaking in; it’s for diagnostics. Beginning and experienced gardeners alike will find this reference book useful in identifying and controlling unwanted garden residents.

Pleasant’s book gives a thorough background profile of most garden weeds found here in the Northeast. Each annotation contains a physical description of the weed, the site and climatic condition it enjoys and the best controls to eradicate the plant. It also includes a brief notation covering each weed’s life cycle, origin, range, flower color and height.

Pleasant touts understanding as the key to proper weed control. Though gardeners often regard weeds as “superplants” because of their tenacity, most garden weeds depend on humans to provide them an open place to grow and suitable soil conditions to thrive. According to Pleasant, a vital key to weed control is denying the plants the opportunity to grow.

“The Gardener’s Weed Book” contains virtually everything any gardener needs to know to win the battle against weeds. The following tips for managing your weeds are from Pleasant’s book with permission from Storey Communications Inc.

Make your garden the right size for you. The more space you cultivate, the more weedy visitors you can expect to appear. Shrink your garden to a more manageable size or use the intensive gardening approach.

Don’t weed where you walk. Turn the pathways between garden beds or rows into havens for beneficial insects by planting them with clovers and tufting (rather than creeping) grasses, and mowing them from time to time.

Use transplants. Growing transplants enables you to pamper seedlings by giving them exactly the right amount of moisture and light. If you set out seedlings when they have several leaves and are poised to grow rapidly, they will do a better job of shading out weeds, too. Plus, it’s much easier to remove weeds that pop up around recognizable seedlings than to pull fast-growing weeds that tower over tiny sprouts.

Off with their heads. Since most of the weed seeds in your soil’s weed seed bank are produced on site, preventing ripe seeds from forming is crucial to long-term weed control.

Delay planting. If you like to plant early, consider waiting awhile with plants that need warm weather to grow. When warm-natured plants struggle to grow in cold soil, they are easily overtaken by weeds.

Get them early. Weeds are going to move in and heal over any bare spots of soil they find, but you can beat them to it by planting the space with lots of cultivated plants. You can then go back and thin your plants to proper spacing, which is usually more enjoyable and less tedious than weeding around a sparse stand of plants that you want to grow.

Weed often. Do it every two weeks. In a study of bell peppers conducted in California, bell pepper yields in plots that were weeded all summer were double that of plots that were weeded only twice, at two and four weeks after transplanting.

Hit them while they’re down. Perennial weeds often depend on food reserves stored in underground roots or tubers. These reserves are usually lowest just before the plants flower. So, with a weed that has especially strong roots, attack it at its weakest season, when it’s poised to begin flowering.

“The Gardener’s Weed Book” sells for $12.95 or is available for $16.40, postage paid, by calling Garden Way Publishing at 800-441-5700. Garden Way Publishing, a division of Storey Communications Inc., is an excellent source for gardening literature. They publish a wide range of home and gardening books.

If you would like to receive a copy of their latest catalog, write to P.O. Box 445, Pownal, Vt. 05261, or call 800-441-5700.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, c/o Maine Weekend, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.