"The Golden Age of Glyphosate is Over"

"The Golden Age of Glyphosate is Over" states The Telegraph this week, and "Thoughtful gardeners should start planning to garden without it after 2022".

Having not been a user of weedkillers, this won't be an issue for me personally, but what can you do if chemicals have become part of your gardening regime?

1) Ensure your beds and borders are planted well. By this I mean reduce plant gaps. Weeds are usually annuals and are mostly pioneer species - meaning they exploit bare soils to colonise. By making sure you don't have bare soil, you reduce light and therefore create soils that are unfavourable for annual weed germination.

Ensure you close the gaps between your plants to make the conditions needed by germinating weeds less favourable. 

2) Mulch. Ensure you much your beds annually. This not only help your garden plants by maintaining good soil moisture conditions, but it helps add nutrients and encourage biotic activity. It also makes weeding easier, as the top surface material is loose, and hoeing the weeds is therefore an easy task.

Mulching means it is easier to hoe off seedlings that have germinated on the surface

3) Try not to dig over your borders where possible. Digging over the soil brings seeds that are lying dormant in the seed bank to the surface, and with light and warmth they spring to life! No Dig methods are available even more vegetable gardening! See here for more information on this.

Consider a 'No Dig' method for your Kitchen Garden

4) Accept wild flowers in your lawn. A weed is only a plant in the wrong place. Wild flowers in the lawn are not in the wrong place. They support our native wildlife, including pollinators. They also add a splash of colour and a tapestry of textures to an otherwise monotone green expanse.

Wildflowers in the lawn are important for our native wildlife

5) Accept weeding as part of your gardening routine. Weeding is good exercise. It also allows you to come into contact with the soil and your plants, having a much more intimate relationship with both. I have spent many hours on my hands and knees, rooting around in amongst my plants. If you maintain the methods discussed above, then this doesn't need to be a weekly activity. I hit my garden only a few times a year.

Textures in the lawn can be a beautiful addition to the atmosphere of your garden

For more in non-chemical weed management, visit the RHS advice page. 

We are able to survive without the use of weedkillers in our gardens. Make it a resolution for 2018, and shake off the reliance of chemicals.