Ask any gardener; weeding is no fun. Gardening is a labor of love and requires a certain level of dedication and attention to detail. Weeds can quickly get out of hand and choke out your beloved plants and seedlings. Plus, they tend to steal nutrients from the soil and compete with your crops and beloved plants. Because gardeners and industrial farmers alike are constantly fighting the battle against weeds, there are countless methods and approaches to getting rid of weeds in your garden. From herbicides, pesticides, weed cloth, and hand-removal, it comes down to personal preference and severity.
However, taking care of small weeds just got much easier with this new gardening hack that has taken TikTok by storm. For those tiny weed seedlings that are a pain to remove, one of the best (little-known) tricks is to use a kitchen fork! While this may seem unexpected or unusual, it is actually highly effective when it comes to removing young weed seedlings in hard-to-reach places. With the help of a kitchen fork, you can easily remove those pesky little weeds without disrupting your plants too much. Forks can scrape and dig all at once, making it enormously easier than tediously pulling weed seedlings individually.
How to best utilize a kitchen fork to pull weeds
@gardeningwithben
My favourite weeding tool! #gardening #allotment #tools #garden #fyp #gardeningtips
♬ Sunroof – Nicky Youre & dazy
There are a few things to note when using a kitchen fork in your garden in order to use it most effectively. The most advantageous way to use a kitchen fork is when the weed seedlings are just popping up and showing their true leaves. Additionally, a kitchen fork is perfect for weeding next to densely planted crops as it gives you a certain level of precision that is more difficult to achieve with larger tools.
Culling the weeds using a fork when they are small is actually one of the best ways to kill weeds and prevent them from becoming established. Once weeds get beyond the seedling stage and grow more extensive root systems, they compete for nutrients with the plants you’re trying to grow. Furthermore, if you let the weeds get too mature and they go to seed, it can take months and maybe even years of weeding to get them out of the seed bed.
The best part of using a fork to remove weeds is that it is much easier to pull out a plant’s root system. Often, when we hand-weed, we only get the foliage and not the entire root system, which inevitably leads to the weed growing back in a few days. However, kitchen forks aren’t the only types of forks people are using for this hack — fondue forks work just as well!
