You can beat weeds without chemicals

Many farmers manage to beat weeds without chemicals.

Most are conventional farmers who want to reduce costs, eliminate weed problems and avoid unpleasant chemicals. Some are organic farmers.

How do they beat weeds without chemicals?

They shift the balance so the crop gets more support and the weeds get less support.

The simple truth is that weeds have advantages that your plants don't. These advantages are the reason some plants get ahead and some don't. And most people find that the plants that get ahead are weeds.

As well as being better adapted to tough conditions, a weed has one distinct advantage over a crop or pasture plant:

But your purpose is to farm, so you are trying to achieve many things. Plus you have a life outside farming.

However, advantage isn't only for weeds and other pests to exploit. You can use your own advantages and your plants' advantages to boost your success in the field or in the market.

What it takes to do this varies from one farmer to the next, from one season to the next and from one farm to the next.

Successful farmers recognize and apply most of the following points:

• Think about it: If a plant is wanted where it is growing, it is not a weed

  a weed is a plant growing where someone doesn't want it.
  
  
• weeds do particularly well in certain environments. Often these are farming or gardening situations. They also do well in other environments, but they are not necessarily weeds there
  
  
• the weed is taking space and other resources from your crop because a crop plant and a weed cannot exist in the same space
  
  
• because of this competition, anywhere there is a weed, your crop is not doing well
  
  
• because a weed has only one purpose, this gives it a distinct advantage over a crop or pasture plant. All it has to do is achieve what its species has evolved to do: produce more weeds
  
  
• you are at a disadvantage because you are dealing with many things other than weeds, including things that aren't farming, such as your family and ideally some recreation.
  
  
• we have bred weeds to do well in conditions that are supposed to suit our crops
  
  
• the first step if you want to beat weeds without chemicals is to understand the causes of weed problems

  Once you understand the causes you can

  • take something from the weed and
    
    
  • give something to your desired plants
    
    
  
  
  
• so you can shift the advantage in your favor and beat weeds without chemicals