Yes you could dig them out with a garden fork, and you set out into the garden, fork in hand, and a heart full of spirit. About 10 minutes later some of the shine is going to start coming off the idea! Digging a garden is slow hard work, you only have 24 hours in your day and a lot of things you need to do. If this, and the VERY painful back injury you will soon be suffering from is not sufficient the following may well be. If the weeds are established you will have things like dandelions and docks with long tap roots which break off when you try and dig them out leaving the end of the root to re-grow. In addition, you will have couch and nettles with spreading roots which snap off when you dig them out leaving little pieces which re-grow. A 1 cm piece of couch root will still survive and flourish if buried 40 cm deep. I could go on listing weeds which will fight back when you start to dig them out but I’m sure you will have got the idea now.

So if we are going to get the garden tided up the most practical solution is to use a weed killer which will kill the perennial weeds.

When you go into the garden centre you will be faced with a bewildering array of garden chemicals but this is down more to the manufactures trying to sell their products more than the range of chemicals available. In fact there is a lot of concern within the horticultural industry that as the rules surrounding garden chemicals becomes stricter and stricter the range is rapidly shrinking to the point where there will be insufficient for the amateur gardener. That aside there is really only a choice of one product as you need something which will kill all the weeds effectively and then disappear so that it won’t poison what you are going to grow next. That is called glyphosate, so write the word down on a piece of paper and go out and pace out the size of your garden and write that down on the same piece of paper and ¦we’re off to the shops!