I tackled weeds by following Monty Don’s advice (Image: Sophie Law)
As the weather warms up, you may notice more weeds sprouting across your garden. A tidy lawn and flower bed can quickly become riddled with dandelion, chickweed and bindweed as temperatures rise in spring.
Like many gardeners, I’ve spent years battling weeds in my garden with various natural methods, including white vinegar and boiling hot water. But last week I decided to try a different approach after reading advice from gardening expert Monty Don — and the results were surprisingly effective. If, like me, you don’t want to resort to harmful chemicals in your garden, the Gardeners’ World presenter’s advice is simple: do everything by hand and a little at a time.
Read more: Monty Don warns gardeners of ‘impossible’ spring weed that needs ‘burning’
Read more: Monty Don’s six-word advice on when gardeners should prune plants in 2026
He suggests gardeners avoid trying to tackle too much at once, explaining in an episode of Gardeners’ World: “Do one metre properly.”
So, by picking a small patch, you can tackle weeds in manageable chunks. He added: “That’s far better than doing 10 metres half-heartedly.”
The horticultural expert explained that pulling weeds out by hand, or with a tool, is preferable as it allows you to get “right up close and personal”, as after all, “a weed is simply a plant in the wrong place.”
He said: “What matters is getting in there. And it’s a very good way of getting to know your soil, getting to know your plants. It’s a very intimate process, weeding.”
He added: “But it’s very important to do it now so they don’t seed and they don’t take over. And the other thing about weeding is do it a little bit at a time.”
My garden is full of weeds by early spring (Image: Sophie Law)
I decided to take this method into my own garden to see if it worked. Rather than rushing through a large area and leaving roots behind, the idea is to focus on a small section and remove every weed thoroughly.
Taking that advice to heart, I chose a section of one border that is usually overrun by early spring. Instead of attempting to clear the entire bed in one go, I concentrated on roughly a metre of soil and worked slowly through it.
I loosened the soil with a small hand fork — but Monty said any tool or your hands will do — and pulled out each weed individually, making sure the full root came away with it.
Plants such as dandelions, nettles and dock can quickly grow back if even a small piece of root remains underground, so the key was removing them completely rather than simply pulling off the visible leaves.
The result was a bed that remained noticeably clearer — without the need for another long afternoon of weeding. By removing new growth early, the seedlings never had time to develop the deeper roots that make weeds harder to remove.
It was also much more effective than methods like white vinegar, which can be hit-or-miss and doesn’t really work on the roots of bigger, established weeds.
Comments are closed.