What Do Weeds Do to a Garden?
Weeds can damage plants in your garden and yard. To avoid damage to your precious plants in the home garden, it’s important that you keep the area clear of weeds. They not only compete with the plants for nutrients, light, and water, but also harbor diseases that could spread to the garden plants.
Weeds must be removed from the garden. Some invasive type of weeds such as bindweed and ground elder can easily swamp the garden when left unchecked.
If you are still not convinced about the threat of weeds to your garden, you can change your mind after reading about the risks of weed infestation in this article. Then, contact Arizona’s Best Choice for weed control services.
Weeds starve plants
Weeds compete with the plants for light, water, and nutrients. When weeds invade the garden, they can starve the plants growing in the garden. The loss of nutrition including phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium can make them prone to disease and insect infestation. The weeds grow at an amazing rate absorbing most of the nutrients in the ground. This can overwhelm the plants causing them to wither away and die. Moreover, lack of nutrients in the ground can lead to abnormal color and fruit growth.
Weeds can be parasites
Parasitic weeds such as aeginetia, orobanche, alectra, and witchweed tend to kill other plants by attaching to their roots or the stems. They tend to suck all the nutrients from the plant making it weak and eventually succumb to disease, starvation, and pest infestation.
Weeds compete for space to grow
Invasive weeds prevent proper plant growth as they compete with them for space, as well. Once left unchecked, they can cover the entire garden. This prevents normal growth of the plant. They tend to take over large spaces killing off the neighboring plants.
Weeds can damage plants to the point where your garden is no longer competition for more and more weeds.
Weeds can have a negative health impact of humans, too
Apart from damaging the plants, weeds also cause a number of health disorders. Common weed species such as rye grass, parthenium weed, ragweed, and privet can cause asthma and other breathing related disorders, particularly in the children.
Some of the weeds are also poisonous and some cause skin irritation. In addition, water weeds such as cabomba and water hyacinth can degrade the quality of the drinking water if they come into contact with the water supply.
Weeds can damage plants: Here’s how to prevent weeds from growing
Weed infestation is a menace that can pose a risk to plants and humans alike. To minimize the damage due to weed, it’s important that you start weeding early before they have a chance to spread their seed.
Be particularly careful when removing the weeds by digging the soil between the plants as it can damage the plant roots. You should avoid digging the soil deep and consider removing the weeds by hand to minimize soil disturbance.
For expert help on removing a weed infestation from your garden in Arizona, you can contact Arizona’s Best Choice Pest & Termite Services.