5 Categories of Weed Control Methods

Farming can be all fun up until your land and plants are infested by unwanted weeds and they keep spreading anywhere. The effort you put into maintaining your farm will just come to waste because of these weeds, which is also an added burden for you since you have to clean those all up.

Put on your gloves and prepare your tools. In this article, we will give you a comprehensive guide on the different weed control methods so you can get ahead of these weeds.

Why Do You Need to Control Weed?

As a farmer, you should know that weeds do not bring benefits to your plants. Hence, parasitic plants affect the growth of your precious plants since they absorb the nutrients, minerals, soils, water, and space that are supposedly catered for your crops.

In some cases, when there’s a younger or smaller plant, weeds usually take what’s supposed to be for the crops, which results to make the weed grow bigger and healthier than the young plants.

These harmful weeds do not only affect your crops but also bring harm to your entire farm. Some type of weeds with thicker leaves and stronger stems mostly blocks the drainage pipes on your farm with later then affect the health of the plants surrounding it. Some crawling weeds take the damage to whole another level and break your farm machinery.

Five Categories of Weed Control Methods

Fighting these harmful weeds should not be complicated. Here, we provide the five known procedures on how you can control weeds on your farm:

Preventative Weed Control

From the term itself, this weed control method aims to prevent unnecessary weeds from growing in your cultivated crop, or in your greenhouse. Preventive weed control takes all the necessary measures just to stall the introduction of unwanted plants and prevent it from spreading all over the farm.

One of the famous examples of this preventive weed control method is the use of weed-free seeds. This method includes transporting weed-free hays to the farm. The farm caretaker also needs to make sure that the farm equipment is thoroughly cleaned before relocating them. It is also essential that the irrigation water is carefully screened to prevent weed seeds from passing through the irrigation ditches.

Although this method promise to reduce the infestation of unwanted weeds, there’s not a single program that can eliminate all varieties of weeds in a single setting. The success of the preventive weed control method depends on the variant of the weed, the amount of effort exerted, and the frequency of performing the method.

Cultural Weed Control

This professional weed control procedure involves cultivating and maintaining the condition of the farmland so that the growth and spread of the unwanted weeds with less likely to grow and foster.

An example of a cultural weed control method would be the rotation of crops to every part of the land. This will not only help prevent the growth of the weeds, but it will also help your plants to continuously grow healthier throughout the rotation. This is because not every type of plant absorbs the same nutrients in the soil, helping the solid to regenerate the nutrients taken and make the land still useful.

Another example would be the avoidance of excessively grazing since it can cause damage to the grasslands. Also, using a competitive species of well-adapted forage can help control the weed from growing.

Mechanical Weed Control

This category of weed control method involves using farm equipment to control the unwanted weeds. One of the effective mechanical weed control methods is tillage, which involves the manipulation of the soil and prepares it for planting.

The other method is called mowing with uses a mower to cuts of the grass or plants that grows on the field.

Biological Weed Control

Biological weed control refers to a method that involves using natural enemies of the unwanted plant. This method is effective to control the germination of the weed saplings and even the spread of the weed that has already grown in the ground.

There are a lot of examples of this method but we will not talk about them all in one sitting. An example of this method involves shepherding a sheep in the field to control a specific type of weeds like tansy ragwort also known as stinking willie. Also the introduction of the Chrysolina beetle to control Perforate St John's-wort.

Chemical Weed Control

Using chemicals (herbicides) to control weeds is also considered to be one of the effective techniques in controlling the germination or growth of weeds in the farmland. Chemical control has a number of examples, which include 2,4-DB, EPTC, paraquat, and bromoxynil, that control weeds in forages.

Cheers to a Weed-Free Farming!

Now that we have learned the purpose of controlling weeds in farming, take this knowledge to make your farming healthier and more abundant. We’ve introduced you to the five effective weed control methods: Preventative Weed Control, Cultural Weed Control, Mechanical Weed Control, Biological Weed Control, and Chemical Weed Control.

If you are looking for the best solutions for your land, Brewer International can help you with all your farming needs.