What Are Weeds And How We Can Control Them: Find Out Now!

One of the main problems that farmers often come across is Weeds. They take away the sunlight, nutrients, and water from the crops and reduce the yield of crops. They are not only unwanted growths but are a potential threat that affect your agricultural production. 

But getting rid of weeds is not an easy task. It involves a lot of effort and time. On the other hand, managing weeds at the proper time, not only maximizes your crops yield but also reduces the labour required. It helps in maintaining your field and crops healthy and productive always.

Have a look into this guide to learn more about what weeds are and how we can control them.

What Are Weeds?

Weeds are unwanted plants that grow along with crops in the field. These weeds generally grow by using the nutrients provided for the crops, doesn’t allow crops to get the proper nutrients and thereby hinder the growth of the crops. 

Not only competitors and pests are known to decrease the production results, weeds also result in reduced yields. But that’s not all. Weeds are even fertile and produce a huge number of seeds that spread easily and grow quickly over large areas.

Weeds are highly adaptable to external conditions of their changing environment. It means they can grow in any condition including drought, floods, and poor soil to better fertile land.

How Weeds Affect Agricultural Land?

Weeds are a complete annoyance and threat to agricultural land that affects the health and productivity of crops. The weeds not only damage the crops but also the life of a farmer, making it difficult to yield good quality crops resulting in loss of money. 

Know how weeds damage agricultural land:

• Weeds steal the nutrients that are important for crops growth, thereby disturbing the desired plants to grow.
• The weeds result in drought conditions. It makes it difficult for the plants to get sufficient amounts of water.
• They result in potential diseases and pests that damage the crops produced in your farmland.
• Weeds also disturb the ecosystem of farmland, thereby making it hard to grow the crops.

How To Control The Weeds:

Do you have weeds in your farm and you are worrying that they may destroy the production of your farm? You don’t have to worry about it anymore. Here, we have provided you with the best ways to control weeds to have better yielding of crops in your field, thereby improving your economy.

1. Cultural Methods:

There are several cultural weeding methods to prevent the growth of weeds. But this method alone doesn’t work well with removal of weeds. You need to follow other techniques along with weeding for better results. These methods include:

• Crop Rotation:
  In this method of farming, crops are altered depending on the changing seasons. This method helps in prevention of weed growth as different plants require different nutrition. This also helps in reducing the risk of pests and diseases, thereby improving the condition of crops and increasing the productivity of land.
• Polyculture
  This is one of the best methods to control the growth of weeds. In this process, different types of crops are grown in the same field and need different nutrients from the soil. This disturbs the weed growth and makes it harder to survive. This method improves biodiversity, and requires no chemical fertilizers, and helps in a more sustainable and better agricultural ecosystem.

2. Physical Methods:

Physical methods of removing weeds include using manual or mechanical techniques that prevent the growth of weeds. Though this method seems to be effective, the weeds can grow again if not removed properly. The physical methods of weeding include:

• Mulching:
  In this method, the land is covered by using an organic or synthetic method to block the sunlight, and hence reduce the growth of weeds. This method allows your land to maintain its moisture levels and control the temperature to improve the overall health of your farmland. Haystacks can be used to cover your land and they will provide better nutrition to your farm.
• Tilling: 
  In this process of weeding, the weeds will be uprooted or buried into the soil using machines such as Weeder. When your field is densely covered with overgrown weeds, this method will surely help you to get rid of weeds in an effective way and improve your crops’ growth. But, relying completely upon tilling may cause soil erosion as well as reduce the growth of beneficial microorganisms.
• Mowing And Cutting:
  Here also mechanical tools are used to manually cut the weeds and reduce the seed production of weeds. This leads to manageable farming that improves the health of crops.
• Cono Weeder:
  This is a simple and budget-friendly weed removing machine that helps the farmer to remove weeds manually. All you need to do is, fill your land completely with water and drive this cono weeder in forward and backward directions to take away the weeds from their roots. This method controls the weed from stealing essential nutrients from your crops.

3. Chemical Methods:

In this process, chemicals such as herbicides are used. These herbicides aim at eliminating unwanted plants by disturbing its growth, development, or metabolism and offer the best and effective weed control. You can use this method before or after the growth of weeds.

But be careful while selecting the proper herbicides for your field as they can target particular types of plants and choosing the wrong herbicide can damage the farmland.

4. Biological Methods:

Here living things such as insects, plants, and other microorganisms are used to remove weeds in a natural way. Some of the biological methods for controlling weeds are as follows:

• Animal Grazing:
  If you have farm animals like cows or goats, you can happily control weeds by letting your cattle graze over them. Apart from preventing the population of weeds, this method also helps to terminate its growth. This method helps your farm animals to get the essential nutrients as well as prevents the weeds from growing.
• Allelopathy:
  The plants that release allelochemicals are used to stop the germination of weeds. It acts as a natural herbicide to eliminate weeds and helps your crops to grow. This lowers the weed’s growth and you can achieve the growth of desired crops and you don’t have to depend on harmful chemicals. This is the best eco-friendly method of weed control.

Best Practices To Control Weeds:

By utilizing the following tips you can effectively control weeds in your land.

• Regular Monitoring Of Your Fields:

  Keep monitoring your fields regularly and it is better to remove the weeds at the earlier stage before they grow.

• Use A Combination Methods:

  Blending different weed controlling methods, like altering crops, mulching, and traditional hand weeding can effectively reduce the growth of weeds.

• Select The Proper Tools:

  Using the suitable machine and proper technology will help in controlling the weeds.

• Keep Records:

  Manage a record of your efforts in controlling weeds. Check out which methods are giving you the optimal results and discard uneffective ones.

• Stay Adaptable:

  Keep changing your strategies as weeds will grow more quickly and give you new challenges.

Common Mistakes To Avoid:

Stop the most common mistakes. By avoiding such mistakes you can save your money, time, and energy. 

• Over-Reliance On Herbicides: 

Don’t depend so much on herbicide as it can affect your mother earth, pollute soil as well as water bodies, and the worst part is it makes weeds become resistant to regular remedies.

• Ignoring Weed Biology:

Not having proper knowledge about the lifespan or behaviour of the specific weeds would lead to improper methods and misuse of resources.

• Not Considering Soil Health:

Neglecting the soil maintenance would result in a favourable environment for growth of weeds and creates a number of problems to your farmland.

• Delaying Treatment:

The delayed weeding methods may cause you a great penalty. It will be hard to control the weeds when they are fully grown leading to greater loss of time and money.

• Not Combining Methods: 

Relying wholly upon a single weed controlling method would result in an ineffective weed management.

Final Thoughts:

Weeds – the threat to agricultural land. But by knowing what weeds are and how to control them, you can greatly reduce these unwanted plants and maximize production of your crops. 

These crops grow on your field by using the nutrients, sunlight, and water from the main plants in your field thereby reducing the production of your crops. So by applying the proper weed controlling process you can surely improve your crop production.

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