When weeds appear in their summer cottage, each gardener is in a hurry to get rid of them as soon as possible, resorting to a variety of methods and methods. It is preferable to deal with harmful vegetation at the moment when it only appears, so as not to start, since weeds grow quite rapidly.
Cleaning the beds and just the territory of the site must be done before the harmful plants have formed seeds, otherwise next year the weeds will sprout in even greater quantities.
A perennial herb called Horse sorrel grows all over the country and can be found in vegetable gardens, parks, orchards and other places. She likes soils with high moisture levels. Horse sorrel, used for treatment in folk as well as traditional medicine, can still create trouble on the site. It interferes with the growth of garden crops. How to get rid of horse sorrel on the site forever? First, let's get to know him better.
Description
Wild horse sorrel is quite tall, can grow up to one and a half meters, has a straight stem, devoid of leaves. It possesses a strong root system, not long, but with a large number of outgoing small roots. The leaves on the crown are elongated, about 20 cm. Unlike many plants similar to it, it has no sour taste.
Horse sorrel
Horse sorrel flowers are lemon-colored and panicle-like. The weed blooms in spring, in the month of May. On it, fruits ripen, which are small, up to 1 cm, in length. They are oval, brown in color. Horse sorrel seeds ripen in July and do not fall off during the entire winter period.
About 70 plant species can be found in Russia, and there are about 150 representatives in this family. Some people use it for food, cultivating on their backyard, like vegetables.
Ways to fight
How to get rid of the Horse sorrel on the site? The first and most simple way to remove the weed is to manually pull it out, but it is suitable only when the presence of a very small amount of harmful weed is revealed in the summer cottage, literally only a few of it. Quite different methods are used for more severe overgrowth or rapid spread.
Also, if there is not too much horse sorrel, a little quicklime is poured under its bush at the time when it just starts to crawl out of the soil. For 2 months after this procedure, no garden crops are planted in this place.
Quicklime
Another way is to knock down the weeds with a bayonet shovel and sprinkle the remains of the plant with wood ash. Pruning is also practiced many times; roots can be removed with a rake.
In more serious cases, it is necessary to resort to the help of chemicals, and specifically herbicides. It is preferable that the treatment with such substances was carried out after harvesting in the autumn. Garden crops will not be damaged at this time. No crops are planted on the site after exposure to herbicide chemicals.
Prevention
Horse sorrel possesses amazing vitality. The root system of the plant is very strong, with its help it sucks out nutrients from cultivated gardeners. Therefore, prevention at the summer cottage is very important, since it can prevent the appearance of sorrel in principle.
To begin with, it is determined for what reason a sorrel pest appears in a particular vegetable garden. Most likely, if sorrel grows, then the soil on the lawn has high acidity, which must be normalized to acceptable values. Ordinary lime will help with this. This process is not recommended to be repeated too often, it should be done every 3 or 4 years. Otherwise, other methods of control may not have the proper effect, and every year in the spring, a harmful plant will appear on the site.
Horse sorrel in the field
In order to remove the Horse sorrel, and it does not appear again next year, they thoroughly clean the land in the fall. Cleaning of beds and aisles, as well as of all paths is carried out. It is necessary not only to remove all weeds from the beds on which vegetable crops grew, but also to harvest all weeds on the territory.
Folk ways
Not all gardeners prefer to use drugs with a chemical composition at their summer cottage.
In a similar situation, folk remedies can be used in the fight against weeds, which are a more gentle option for such purposes:
- Common salt has efficiency and availability. It helps to kill weeds when it is sprinkled on the ground at some distance from garden crops. In this case, only weeds die. Being inside the soil, the salt solution will become an obstacle to the germination of weeds for a while;
- You can also use an acetic acid solution by pouring it into a spray bottle. It is sprayed directly on those weeds that are planned to be destroyed;
- Effective work of weed control is done with sawdust and even old unnecessary newspapers. They must be scattered between the ridges in a small layer. They should decompose for about a year, and then this mixture is transferred to the right place and together with it they dig up the earth;
- Another popular method for killing weeds is using baking soda. You need to make a soda, very concentrated solution and water the beds after the crop has already been harvested. You can pour this product over each weed that you plan to remove to minimize the danger to other plants.
Tips and tricks for gardeners
Based on personal experience with horse sorrel, many gardeners believe that the best and most effective method is to dig up each individual plant. It is hard, one might say, titanic work, but it is worth it, in their opinion.
The vegetable garden can be cleaned of shavel
Horse sorrel, like other perennial weeds, has the ability to develop very quickly and form powerful roots. A very effective method is periodic pruning of weeds, followed by raking out.
If the root system of the Horse sorrel has sunk into the soil very deeply, and sometimes the root of the plant reaches 40 cm, then it is necessary to use a weeder or a ripper of a piercing type. Pruning should be done once every 2 weeks, at which time the weed begins to re-release new shoots.
Another method used by summer residents to get rid of weeds is to cut the weeds and cover this place with a black film. Other gardeners enclose all places where cultivated plants grow with slate sheets, which are dug into the ground to a shallow depth. Perennial harmful weeds cannot penetrate the fence and plantings, thus being protected.
Weeds, not without reason, are called the real scourge of gardens and summer cottages. It may happen that horse sorrel never appears in the garden.But, if such a problem already exists, it is necessary to get rid of it as soon as possible, in order to avoid worsening the situation, and by what method, chemical or folk, the summer resident himself should decide.
