Invasive plants left on their own can eat up all the space in a garden. They take nutrients from other plants, spreading from border to border and those that aren’t able to feed themselves inevitably wilt and die.
Painstakingly removing invasive plants does not mean they will not return. To avoid a case of spreading like wildfire, here are some tricks you can use to keep invasive plants away from your garden.
Chemicals
Most people rely on spraying chemicals to kill invasive plants. It’s fast and effective, though not healthy. If you’re going to be eating foods from the same garden, spraying a ton of chemical invasive plant killer isn’t the best plan.
If you do intend to use chemicals, read up on pesticides and chemicals. Ensure you’re using chemicals safely and correctly. You don’t want to kill any plants you don’t have to. The effectiveness of chemicals can also vary according to plant, soil type, temperature, and the growth stage a plant is in.
Use Faux Plants
High-quality premium-grade artificial plants are a novel way to fill in your garden. An imitation, there’s nothing about a faux plant that’s actually alive or growing. Available in various styles and sizes, they can be used to help protect some of your favourite plants.
Though you can have a garden entirely of fake plants, mixing them in with real plants works. Create barriers.
Pluck, Dig, Remove
Manual removal of invasive plants is simple and safe. They are an important tool you can use if invasive plant growth hasn’t gotten totally out of hand. If a weed is young and it’s dug out, the ability to reproduce is unlikely to have fully developed. If all you have are one or two invasive plants, try this method.
A much easier way to maneuver invasive plants away from your garden, start with digging them out.
Avoid Overwatering
Yes, you can actually take ‘too good’ care of your plants. Although faux plants don’t require watering or sunlight, real plants do. When you take care of your garden, you take care of everything in it – including weeds and invasive species.
If this is what’s happening, take out your good plants and leave behind only the invasive or undesired plants. Cover a planter in plastic for a few weeks and bake the invasive species. The heat will kill everything. Then, replant everything, using an additional layer of mulch – i.e. woodchips, bark, cardboard, compost, grass clippings, or straws – to protect your plants from invasive plants moving in.
Use Organics
Organic removal of invasive species involves using live organisms. It’s a bit of a long-term play, however, you avoid any toxic chemical usage in this way. Unfortunately, by ‘long-term’, we actually mean it may take months to work.
Live organisms are a control agent. They abate the competitive nature of invasive plants.
Biological Herbicides
If all you want to do is lay out a chemical, kill your weeds and invasive plants, and move on, biological herbicides are a lot more eco-friendly to plants than using pure garden chemical products.
Biological herbicides use native pathogens to destroy a species. What’s most commonly used is fungi. That said, other types of bacteria, insects, and nematodes can come in handy. Spray it across an infected area. It will go to work immediately.
The benefits of faux plants are that you don’t have to worry about invasive plants taking over. They’re a great buy, especially for homeowners and renters who don’t have the time to be monitoring their garden constantly. Shop the best artificial plants in Europe at Artiplanto today.