Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / July 2008

As a fan of neither but practitioner of both, I can say that in clay
soil none of the above works for me!  When it would be the best time
to hoe (ie, when you are doing more cultivation than hoing small,
eensy teensy weeds) the ground is too wet to work or dry/tough as a
parking lot.  As in no way would a tiller or a hoe work at all.
Raised beds, yada yada.  It's being amended for several years now with
all the right organic stuff, just swallows it down and seems to not
make much difference in soil quality.  Peat, leaves, straw and grass
clippings in vast quantities, and seasonal application of aged manure,
sand and sand and sand.

And the reverse is also true, when the ground has dried to the point
it can be worked with a hoe, the weeds have a good head start on me.
My window seems to be quite small where the ground may be worked, and
often I'm not prepared to do the work at the most propitious time.

This year I am taking a stand with a grub hoe - adze or mattock - that
weighs in at 8-12 pounds and plan to clobber the weedy patch - er,
garden - before the things are 8 foot tall again.  I have started
layering in bales and bales of straw.  My short potato row took 1.5
bales of straw, but it looks promising - the only weeds left are the
ones poking up on the edges, not around the potato plants.  They are
somewhat easy to pull, as that soil was amended with 6-8 inches of
wood chips several years ago and they have turned into a delightful
almost-soil mixture.  If the straw lasts longer than the season I will
try to till it in and get more straw next season.  $7/bale but the
bales are larger than "normal".  I don't know exactly what that means,
but my experience prior to this was the smaller bales, and 7 would be
too high a figure for those.  The ones I mention are at least 1.5
times the size of those small regular bales.

The corn was a different tale, as I layered in some bags of leaves I
conned - er, received from a friend.  I think these were kinda acidic
in quantity, as the seedlings have not done much at all for 2.5 weeks
now.  They might be past the crucial stage as they are beginning to
turn from a sickly yellow to a nice dark green.  They have been
mulched with a layer or 3 of newspaper, followed by a layer of leaves,
topped with 3-5 inches of straw.  Weeds are coming up through that
like it's hard to believe - wisps of grass and creeping charlie and
ragweed.  Not supposed to, but there you are.

I think back to the days of my misspent youth when the garden at the
old home was really nice and friable and could be worked with a hoe -
that was good soil, and I was too young to appreciate it.

Definately takes longer and more effort IMO pulling the weeds by hand
one handful or plant at a time than it takes hoeing.

If possible, do it while the soil is moist.  Stay on top of the weed
population, and hand method is fine.

I find the hoe works best with little weeds, but it merely breaks off the
upper growth.  For things like grass, you'll probably have to pull it out
(or trowel it out.)

Our garden got away from us, so there's been grass and other weeds
growing like crazy.  My weeding tool of choice this time:  Lawn mower.  
(Next will come the tiller, and a second planting of beans and peas.)  
I've also been using a scickle (that may be spelled wrong... I think it's
right, but it looks wrong) to take out the grass and leave the tomatos.  
These are more extreme "taking back the garden" measures, though... keep
on top of your weeding some how and you won't need to do this!

Puckdropper

PS: Your signature indication is improperly formed.  There should be a
space after the two dashes.

I use ours on wide expanses or long stretches. My favourite is the
stirrup hoe because, kept sharp, it just sails beneath the soil. I use a
Japanese gardener's knife for close in work as well as digging and
rooting out weeds.

My wife won a set of short, stainless, hand hoes and she's almost never
without one in the garden.

The way I figure it, If you keep after the weeds with a hoe, you can
disturb the disturbable, encourage dormant seeds for the next hoeing,
starve the perennial weeds and take off swaths of short weeds before
they can set seed.

A hoe in wet clay is a nearly useless tool.

    It seems to me that, all else equal, hoeing would produce the
greatest return for time and effort. Although, hand weeding may produce
more thorough and long-term results, scale and urgency of need often
make it impractical. A number of techniques may help you greatly reduce
or virtually eliminate weeding of any sort. For example, organic,
newspaper or even plastic mulches on row crops may greatly reduce
"weeds" as well as evaporative water loss. Further, one may convert to
wide-row cultivation, raised bed cultivation and/or adapt Bartholemew's
"square foot" doctrine (for example) to his own preferences. Each of
these quickly reduces weeds and may easily lead to "no till" or
"hand-till" veggie gardening.
    FWIW: You might even want to re-evaluate the zeal with which you
weed. Unless they negatively affect the vitality of or your ability to
cultivate/harvest the food crop, you might do well to leave the weeds in
place. Their shade reduces evaporative water losses as well as
germination of future generations. "Weeds" with deep and complex root
systems, if left to continue their life cycles, very effectively reclaim
nutrients that have leached beyond reach of common vegetable plants once
they are added to the garden's compost.

Depends on the weed and the root length.  They vary.  And it depends on how
mature you let the weed get.

Steve

Andy comments:

 All of the responses I have read have merit, but none of them are
considering
the most important item:

 It takes TWO HANDS to work a hoe.

 If you pull the weeds with your right hand, you can still hold the
 beer in your left....

 Ya just gotta look at the BIG picture....

                      Andy in Eureka, Texas