Weeds are a persistent problem in your garden because they thrive under tough conditions. Left unchecked, they can quickly crowd and injure your flowers and shrubs. They also rob your plants of nutrients and water. You might think the solution is a question of how to kill weeds. In fact, the best way to relieve your flowers, shrubs and other ornamentals of weeds is by preventing them from sprouting in the first place.

The Best Approach to Garden Weed Control

Preen Garden Weed Preventer will prevent new weeds from sprouting—eliminating the need for difficult and time-consuming hand-weeding.

In any season plants are growing, the best garden weed control strategy has only 2 steps. Your first step is to remove existing weeds. Your second step is to apply a garden weed preventer like Preen. Preen Garden Weed Preventer blocks unwanted seeds from germinating. When used as directed, the product will keep your garden weed-free for an entire season. Simply reapply Preen Garden Weed Preventer 9-12 weeks later for continued weed prevention.

Preen Garden Weed Preventer works great with mulch – it’s as simple as sprinkling over-the-top and watering in. You can also lightly rake Preen Garden Weed Preventer into your mulch if watering is not convenient. To save even more time, consider a step-saving product like Preen Mulch with Extended Control Weed Preventer. Preen Mulch Plus combines weed preventer with natural hardwood mulch. After you’ve planted your flowers and shrubs, apply Preen Mulch Plus to control broadleaf and annual weeds for up to 6 months.

If you’re wondering how to kill weeds safely in your vegetable garden, stop them from ever sprouting with a natural weed control product. Preen Natural Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer with proven natural ingredients are safe for fruit and vegetable bearing plants. Just sprinkle evenly over the soil when your plants are 2-3 inches tall and water in. You can even use twice the recommended rate for better natural weed control with no fear of damaging your plants. Be sure to follow label instructions.

The Solution to Actively Growing Weeds

If you need to eliminate actively growing weeds before applying a preventer, your choices of how to kill weeds are either "mechanical" – hand-pulling or hoeing – or chemical.

At first glance, chemical spray may seem like an easy solution. Remember that chemical spray won’t tidy up your garden immediately. It takes time for treated weeds to die. Even when they do, the dead weeds still have to be manually removed. What’s more, a spray-and-remove approach often must be repeated throughout the growing season.

Your best answer for how to kill weeds that are actively growing is called "mechanical weed control." Mechanical weed control means uprooting and removing unwanted plants, usually by hand-weeding, hoeing or turning over the soil. Garden soil contains thousands of dormant and buried weed seeds that waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Applying Preen Garden Weed Preventer next will keep lingering weed seeds from germinating for the rest of the season – a guarantee chemical sprays can’t always make.

We may never know how to kill weeds for good, but controlling weeds before they become a problem with Preen Garden Weed Preventer can keep weeding off your to-do list for an entire season. With Preen, you’ll have no unsightly weeds and more time to enjoy your garden.

Some weeds germinate from seed in the cool soil of fall and early winter, then grow and flower early the following year. Other weeds germinate in the spring or early summer and grow all summer before dying in fall. For year-round weed prevention, reapply Preen Weed Preventers once or twice more during the year according to label recommendations.