Hand Weeding Of Beds

A very popular service offered by Suburban Landscaping is the hand weeding of beds. This laborious task is handled by our dedicated crews on a monthly basis or just whenever you call in. Included in the service is the removal and proper disposal of all the generated debris.

Weeds are typically a minor concern in established landscapes where the shrubs and ground covers have filled in and can “shade out” all but the most persistent weeds. However, bare soil beds and mulch beds can often become littered with annual and perennial weeds in a rather short timeframe. Once the roots develop into the soil below the mulch, then weeds can become a much larger problem.

Weed Basics

There are basically two kinds of weeds;

 Annual Weeds:

The annual weed seeds blow into your beds, start growing, send out new seeds to create new weeds, and then die at the first frost. Here are a few examples of annual weeds:

• Dandelion
• Plantain
• Chickweed
• Ragweed
• Spurge
• Purslane
• Black Medic

Perennial Weeds:

The perennial weed usually has a root system or runner that lives throughout the winter. These weeds are the most resilient and the hardest to eradicate.

• Thistle
• Evening Primrose
• Buttercup
• Prickly Lettuce
• Mallow
• Wild Violet

In these two general groups of weeds are also the sub-groups called Grassy Weeds and Broadleaf Weeds. Most of the above lists are broadleaf weeds, which are the most noticeable in the lawn and landscape. Grassy weeds in the lawn can sometime go un-noticed because they blend in so well. Below are a list of common grassy weeds in the Chicago area:

• Crabgrass
• GooseGrass
• Yellow Foxtail
• Barnyardgrass
• Yellow Nutsedge

Residential/Small Commercial Weeding Service

Our weeding service can be tailored to your specifications, or can be performed upon request. Our most popular service is our monthly weeding service, which is a monthly visit by our trained crews to pull weeds at your property once a month. Monthly weeding of the beds is typically sufficient to keep weeds at bay, and yet doesn’t break-the-bank. Our weeding crews service all types of clients, including residential, commercial, and multifamily.

The standard monthly weeding service for your beds includes the following:

• Monthly Visit
• Hand pull larger weeds
• Spray small weeds
• Hand pull any weed growing inside a shrub
• Hand pull tree saplings
• Spray gravel/utility areas
• Pull expired perennial tops (late summer)

Large Commercial/Multifamily Weeding Service

Larger properties can spend a fortune maintaining weed free planting beds, especially if the property has depleted mulch, bare soil, or cracked plastic weed barriers. For these properties, chemical weed control is often the best solution. It starts with a pre-emergent application to provide an invisible chemical barrier against weed seed germination. Then followed my monthly or bi-monthly herbicide applications. With this program some manual hand weed pulling may still be needed in and around the landscape shrubs and perennials.

How To Avoid Weeds

The best way to avoid weeds growing in your landscape beds is to use a “weed barrier”, which blocks the weed roots from getting to the soil underneath. A weed barrier can be many different things, but the most common are Mulch and a fabic/plastic underneath bedding stone. Weeds have a hard time growing in either type of bed, but anything is better at preventing weeds than bare soil. The bottom-line for weed prevention is to not have bare soil or allow weeds access to it. Visit our Mulch page for more information on mulching your beds.

What Does Hand Weeding Of Beds Cost?

All weeding is done by the Man-Hour at a rate of $30 per hour. Typically our crews consist of three or four trained women equipped with a variety of tools to do the job in the most expedient manner. For accuracy in billing, all of our trucks are equipped with live-time GPS so we can monitor the crews time on your property.