Weed control in the garden is an eternal problem. In a landscaped area, you want to create optimal conditions for garden crops and get a decent harvest, but weeds, including woodlice, resist this in every possible way, robbing vegetables of both nutrition and space. How to get rid of woodlice on your property forever is a task that requires some effort.
Information about the woodlice plant
The scientific name of the common woodlice is chickweed. Its other names are associated with some medicinal properties and a predisposition to rapid growth on moist soils - woodlice, midge, midge, hernia grass, heart grass.
A low herbaceous plant with succulent stems and small rounded leaves. It blooms throughout the growing season with small, star-shaped white flowers. From the beginning of flowering to the complete ripening of the seeds, 4-5 weeks pass, then the next cycle begins, and so on throughout the growing season. About 15,000 seeds can ripen on one bush per season.
Information! The seeds are very resistant to external factors and remain viable in the soil for a long time, from 2 to 5 years. For germination, a temperature of +4°C is enough for them, so they germinate earlier than other plants.
Prevention of wood lice
Competent prevention will help avoid the reappearance of woodlice in the house. To do this, just follow the basic rules:
- maintain high efficiency of the ventilation system;
- promptly eliminate damage and malfunctions of pipes that lead to moisture accumulation and condensation;
- maintain a high level of cleanliness in the apartment.
Woodlice can enter a human home through any cracks. Treating vents, sewer and water pipes with insecticidal or homemade repellent preparations will help reduce the likelihood of their occurrence.
Mechanical impact and agrotechnical measures
Work on removing the weed should begin in early spring, when the soil has just thawed and the growing season has not begun for the plant.
Stages of mechanical impact:
- digging and loosening the soil while simultaneously removing weed roots and plant residues;
- primary weeding of emerging sprouts or, if possible, loosening with removal of roots;
- later during the season, weeding should be carried out regularly as new shoots appear, using a narrow spatula or a special tool to remove roots;
- After harvesting, dig up the soil, remove all small roots, otherwise in the spring they will take root and sprout again.
It is recommended to dig with a pitchfork to reduce damage to the roots, particles of which remain in the ground.
After each weeding, all plant debris must be removed, otherwise it will be difficult to get rid of woodlice in the garden - any remaining root or stem will give rise to a new plant. It is not recommended to put woodlice into compost - the tenacious seeds will not lose their germination during its preparation.
Of course, weeding and manual cultivation of the beds is physically expensive work, but its annual implementation will lead to almost complete removal of the weed. In the future, it will be necessary to avoid getting plant residues with woodlice seeds into the soil (on the soil).
How to reduce soil acidity
Regular mechanical action combined with a decrease in acidity can give very good results.
One of the most effective ways to reduce acidity is to add lime. It is best to apply it when digging up the site in the fall after harvesting. The amount of lime depends on the acidity level of the soil - add 60 kg per hundred square meters to very acidic soil, 45 kg to moderately acidic soil, and 30 kg to slightly acidic soil.
Adding slaked lime during spring digging also gives good results - 50-150 g per 1 m². Slaked lime is prepared by adding water to lime.
To reduce acidity, it is convenient to use dolomite flour immediately before planting - it is not capable of burning the roots and stems, like lime. The norm per 1 m² for acidic soil is 500-600 g, medium acidic soil is 400-500 g, slightly acidic soil is 300-400 g.
Important!
The acidity of the soil is restored over time, so deacidification must be carried out every year.
Mulching
Mulching is blocking the access of light to weeds (and not only) plants. In the dark, the process of photosynthesis stops, which leads to the death of not only the above-ground part, but also the roots. Any material that does not transmit light is suitable as mulch: roofing felt, black film, boards, old linoleum, agrofibre.
You can use a coating of organic matter, for example, grass, leaves, hay, spreading it in a layer of 10 cm. In this case, when overheated, it will also serve as a source of nutrients.
This method requires a long time - from an area covered in the spring, the covering can only be removed the following summer.
Mulching can be carried out partially by pouring a layer of mulch around the plant or cutting holes for it in the film - the cultivated plant will receive both nutrition and the necessary lighting.
Woodlice: description of the plant
Woodlice weed
It’s unlikely that anyone knows how to get rid of woodlice in the garden forever, but there are effective control measures. They are based on knowledge of the characteristics of the plant.
Chickweed thickets are difficult to confuse with another weed. Shoots from the central stem spread in all directions, branch densely, forming a luxurious carpet. Touching the damp soil, they easily take root, producing further nests of shoots. The stems rise upward by 10-15 cm, covering the entire space underneath with their apical leaves. If you successfully pick up a bush at the base and carefully pull it out of the thickets, you will end up with a whole armful of lush greenery in your hands, and a good bald spot will remain on the ground.
Leaves up to 1.5 cm, round, ovate, sit in pairs on the stem opposite each other. The secret of the fruitfulness of woodlouse grass is flowering and fruiting throughout the summer season, from spring until the first snows. Faded chickweed contains many seeds in each fruit capsule. One plant produces up to 15 thousand of them per season, and they can germinate in 5 years.
It loves damp places, so in well-fertilized loose beds with regular watering you have to monitor the weed especially carefully. It is regenerated from the smallest fragments of the root system left in the soil, which is why getting rid of woodlice grass forever by weeding is an almost impossible task.
Interesting! The dependence of chickweed on moisture has long been noticed by people: the petals of inflorescences closed during the day indicate that rain is coming.
For systemic weed control, knowledge of the soil on which woodlice grows is used. She prefers acidic soils.
Use of chemicals
Depending on the area occupied by weeds and the proximity to other plants, it is sometimes convenient to use herbicides, for example, Tornado, Hurricane.
Plants 5-10 cm tall are subject to treatment. If the area is large, then spray with a solution of 120 ml of the drug and 5 liters of water, but if there are single plants or there is a fear of damaging neighboring crops, then the treatment can be carried out using a brush.
All work with chemicals must be carried out with gloves and special clothing.
Reference!
Herbicides have a detrimental effect not only on weeds, but also on other plants and have no effect on seeds in the soil.
How to deal with woodlice in garden beds
Beds filled with chickweed indicate fertile and well-moistened soil, but insufficient permeability, severe compaction and poor drainage, and also, possibly, acidification of the site. Therefore, first of all, if you want to get rid of woodlice, you need to try to influence the condition of the soil in the garden.
If the soil in the beds is too acidic, it needs to be neutralized - this, by the way, will only benefit most garden crops. This must be done using so-called deoxidizing agents - wood ash, chalk, slaked lime (fluff), dolomite flour. The application rates for such lime-containing preparations depend on the composition of the soil and its acidity level and are calculated individually each time. The most “strong” deoxidizers are applied only in the spring after the snow melts or in the fall before digging, because they can harm vegetative plants - such agents include, for example, fluff. Other substances, like ash or dolomite, are more gentle and can be added to the soil all year round.
Some green manures can also help to gently deoxidize the soil - phacelia, white mustard, sweet clover and alfalfa. With proper crop rotation, you can even do without using minerals on the site altogether.
- What kind of soil is on your site - how to determine and improve the composition of the soil
Do litmus tests show acidity incorrectly? Are you worried about the presence of dense lumps? Find out if everything is okay with the soil at your summer cottage!
If the soil in your beds is constantly waterlogged, you should think about building a drainage system on the site - a high groundwater level and regular flooding will benefit few garden and vegetable crops.
- Drainage system on site - how to choose and install
Tired of struggling with stagnant puddles and excess moisture in your area? Install a drainage system immediately.
As preventive measures for the appearance of woodlice on the site, it can be advised to observe crop rotation, weed the plantings in time, do not forget to loosen the soil as deeply as possible (to bury woodlice seeds) or use mulch (grass or straw in the beds, black film between the rows), and not the beds should be empty (other fast-ripening crops or green manure can be planted in place of the early harvested crop).
If you already have woodlice thickets, you will have to look for effective measures to combat the weed.
To begin with, you can try to weed out the chickweed. This must be done regularly and carefully, and we must not forget that it easily reproduces even with pieces of stems, so after weeding with a pitchfork, you need to lift and sift the soil so as not to leave even small parts of the weed in it. Not in one weeding or even in a week, but over time you will be able to significantly reduce the amount of weed. Of course, you shouldn’t leave weeded chickweed greens scattered around the site; it’s better to send them to the compost heap.
As the most serious means of combating woodlice, if it cannot be removed from the site by any other means, use approved herbicides - Zenkor Ultra, Lazurit, Fighter, Clorit (spraying vegetative weeds before sowing crops, 2-5 days before crop emergence or in autumn during the post-harvest period).
Roundup , Tornado and Hurricane recommended in many sources for these purposes are prohibited for use in private household plots due to their high toxicity!
- Popular drugs that are strictly prohibited to be used in the countryside
Do you use only approved pesticides or pour any “chemicals” onto your garden beds?
Folk methods against woodlice
In the fight against any weeds, we have always used folk remedies that do not harm the soil, garden plants and humans:
- Use a strong saline solution to water areas overgrown with wood lice (paths, empty spaces, but not beds where vegetables grow), or sprinkle dry salt at the rate of 1.5 kg per 1 m²;
- Spray the weed thickets with the mixture - 2 cups vinegar and water + 1 sachet of citric acid + 30 g of alcohol + 2 tsp. detergent, being careful not to get on the vegetable plantings;
- Spray woodlice seedlings with a saturated soda solution (no closer than 20 cm to the cultivated plants);
- use herbicidal soap for treatment - a mixture of equal parts of salt, vinegar and crushed laundry soap.
How to get rid of wood lice using folk remedies
You can get rid of pests such as woodlice using safer methods. Today, the following options for combating woodlice remain effective:
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- Dry kvass. You need 40 g of it and add 2 cups of boiling water. Use the resulting decoction to treat areas where parasites are concentrated.
- Salt. This remedy is one of the most effective. You just need to sprinkle salt over the area, near the compost pit, between the beds. Then the pest will have no choice but to leave the territory. But how salt is used to kill weeds in the garden is indicated in this article.
- Red pepper solution. To prepare it, you need to take 3 g of ingredients such as red pepper, tobacco and soda. Fill everything with 1 liter of water. Treat the entire area with the resulting solution, but do not get it on useful crops.
