Pulling weeds might be the most thankless chore that humans undertake. You can spend hours on your hands and knees, uprooting invasive plants, only to feel at the end of the day like their numbers have continued to grow. Rather than break your back, learn how you can prevent weeds from encroaching upon your yard in the first place — and learn why turning to the experts can give you a leg up.

Common Weeds To Watch Out For

Because of Arizona’s desert scrub landscape, weeds are some of the only plants that truly thrive in large numbers. That makes the task of keeping them out of your yard truly difficult to accomplish. Here are some common weeds to be on the lookout for:

• Bursage: A family of weeds that resemble dried sage, these are not only invasive but can dry out and form clumps of tumbleweed, dispersing their seeds far and wide as they are carried off in the wind.
• Crabgrass: This unsightly grass is a common weed no matter where you point on a map. It is hardy and resistant to many kinds of herbicides.
• Purslane: A type of waxy succulent, these can sometimes be desirable decorative plants, though they can quickly overtake a garden and many varieties will starve your other plants of nutrients and water.

Weeds: Lawn Nightmares

Weeds aren’t always ugly. Some of them aren’t ugly at all, containing bright and decorative flowers that some might even find appealing. But even pretty weeds can be a blight for your yard. The problem with weeds is that they take up more than their fair share of resources and real estate. They overtake soils and their strangling roots can kill off other plants. Weeds can turn healthy green lawns into dry patches and they can muscle out expensive decorative flowers. Those issues might not be so bad if they weren’t also hard to get rid of and keep off of your lawn in the first place. Weeds, by their very nature, can spread far and wide thanks to their seeds and spores that can be carried from miles away. Once a few weeds crop up, it doesn’t take long for them to overtake your other plants. This is why complete prevention is more important than reactively managing weeds.

Weed Prevention: What To Know

By the time a weed sprouts out of the ground, it’s already laid down a deep root that can be nearly impossible to fully extract and prevent from growing back. That’s why it’s important to use all the tools you can to protect your yard from weeds in the first place. You can do that with these steps:

• Mulch: Laying down mulch over the top of your garden soil will not only help plants grow by providing them with needed nutrients, but mulch can also prevent weeds from gaining access to the soil hidden below. It can also starve new-growing weeds of sunlight, preventing them from maturing. Beware, however, that some cheap mulches can contain weed seeds directly in the bag already.
• Chopping: Because their taproots can be so difficult to get rid of, weed control can be more manageable by lopping off the tops of existing weeds. This prevents their seeded flowers or heads from spreading future generations of weeds into the soil. Be careful to quickly dispose of the weed heads and put them somewhere where they can’t infest useful soil.
• Treatments: Professional treatments of your lawn can ward off a wide variety of weeds, preventing you from having to uproot them in the future.

Superior Weed Protection From Ozone

Keeping weeds out of your yard is kind of like trying to keep a snowball frozen in the desert. With the right equipment and abundant time to keep an eye on it, you might be successful, but the task isn’t possible for your average property owner. Instead of taking on the impossible task on your own, you should enlist the help of lawn care experts who can help you control weeds. At Ozone Pest Control, we know how to prevent and protect against local weed varieties, providing you with proven elimination methods and, even more important, future prevention.   Rather than spend your days in the blistering sun addressing weeds, let Ozone Pest Control keep your yard healthy with our proven weed solutions. Contact us today to get started.