Top News

As temperatures begin to climb, gardeners across the country may find unwanted weeds creeping up across their lawns and flower beds. Dandelions, chickweed and bindweed can swiftly take hold as spring warmth sets in.

Like countless gardeners, I spent years fighting weeds using a variety of natural remedies, from white vinegar to boiling water. However, I then decided to try a fresh approach after coming across advice from renowned gardening expert Monty Don - and the outcome was remarkably impressive. For those, like me, who are reluctant to use harmful chemicals, the Gardeners' World presenter's guidance is straightforward: tackle everything by hand, little by little.

He recommends that gardeners resist the urge to take on too much at once, explaining in an episode of Gardeners' World: "Do one metre properly."

By focusing on a small patch at a time, weeds can be dealt with in manageable portions. He added: "That's far better than doing 10 metres half-heartedly."

The horticultural expert noted that pulling weeds out by hand, or with a tool, is the preferred method as it allows you to get "right up close and personal", since 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. 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."

I decided to put this technique to the test in my own garden to see whether it held up in practice. Rather than racing through a large patch and leaving roots intact, the principle is to concentrate on a small section and extract every weed with thoroughness.

Taking that guidance on board, I selected a stretch of one border that typically becomes overrun by early spring. Rather than attempting to tackle the entire bed in a single session, I focused on approximately a metre of soil and worked my way through it methodically.

I loosened the earth using a small hand fork - though Monty noted that any tool or even your bare hands will suffice - and pulled out each weed individually, ensuring the entire root came away with it.

Plants such as dandelions, nettles and dock can rapidly regenerate if even a tiny fragment of root remains beneath the surface, so the crucial element was extracting them entirely rather than merely tearing away the visible foliage.

The outcome was a border that stayed noticeably weed-free - without requiring another lengthy afternoon of toiling away. By tackling new growth at an early stage, the seedlings never had the opportunity to establish the deeper roots that make weeds considerably more stubborn to remove.

It also proved far more reliable than alternatives such as white vinegar, which can be unpredictable and fails to address the roots of larger, well-established weeds.