[babycakes]

hi all was wonderin if any1 could help  im about to plant some new bulbs (all sorts of flowers) this week in a small border that i have at the side of my garage wall, only this border gets covered in weeds every year even tho im pullin the weed bulbs up!!! ggrrr if i plant my flower bulbs in this border and there is plenty of them will the weeds still come up? Altho the weeds do flower lovely colours every year they are not doing wonders for my climbing clematis. Cheers folks. K x

[robbodaveuk]

Are they annual weeds, perennials or both? You say a small border, which shouldn't be too hard to control. First of all, dig it over a spade/forks depth and remove all weeds and roots you find, go through each spadeful and get as many as you can. That will remove most of the perennial weeds. The hoe is now your best friend. After preparing the soil and planting your bulbs, when things start growing you need to start hoeing. Just make absolutely sure you know which are your flowers and which are weeds. If you are not sure what the growing flowers look like, put a marker above each one planted and don't hoe within a couple of inches of it until you are sure which are flowers and which are weeds. Keep hoeing the weeds every few days. You could also put down a mulch/bark chips round the flowers, this will help suppress the weeds. You will never stop annual weeds coming through but will get them down to a manageable quantity. As for any perennial weeds that are still there, eventually the hoeing will kill them off.

Hope this helps.

  Robbo.

[DavidT]

K, you say weedbulbs, what do these weeds look like?