In a colorful flower bed, you want to see the wonderfully colorful flowering perennials that you have lovingly selected and carefully planted in the garden center. It's all the more annoying when orach, couch grass or groundweed suddenly spread - especially since these weeds are very difficult to remove. However, with a few tricks you can keep the unwanted growths away from the start.
How do I create a flower bed without weeds?
To create a flower bed without weeds, you can lay out weed fabric, mulch the bed with bark mulch, lawn clippings or straw, or plant densely growing ground cover such as geranium or pachysandra. Before planting, you should dig the bed thoroughly and remove roots.
Keeping the flowerbed free of weeds – The best tips
Nature strives to cover every open area, fallow areas are not intended and are quickly conquered by pioneer plants. This completely natural phenomenon doesn't stop in the garden, no matter how much you might resist it. However, take precautions by already “occupying” any free areas in the bed, then even the most vigorous weeds will have a hard time.
Lay out weed fleece
A commercially available weed control fabric serves well here. You simply place the fleece over the entire bed area and cut a sufficiently large hole in it at the planting sites intended for the perennials. Plant the perennials and cover the fleece with either soil, mulching material, gravel, stones or pebbles.
Mulching
Mulching the flower bed has also proven to be effective against weeds. Bark mulch, for example, is a natural material that decomposes slowly and has a positive influence on the soil composition. However, bark mulch not only has advantages but also disadvantages: This includes the fact that the material removes a lot of nitrogen from the soil, which in turn is no longer available to the plants. However, this problem can be avoided by generously applying horn shavings (€52.00 on Amazon) and incorporating them lightly before mulching. Grass clippings or straw are also very suitable for mulching, but cannot reliably prevent weeds.
Planting ground cover plants
True to the motto that where something is already growing, weeds can no longer find a place, flowering ground cover plants can be used wonderfully in easy-care flower beds. Species such as the Balkan cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum), blood cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum), fat man (Pachysandra), elf flower (Epimedium) or small periwinkle (Vinca minor) have an impact both through their dense foliage and their pretty flowers.
Tip
Before planting the flower bed, you should dig it up thoroughly and remove all roots. This measure also helps to suppress weed growth.
