For people with established yard 'meadows', do you even weed anymore?

I do still weed a lot.  I’m on year 5 in my small backyard garden, and I still get invasives popping up. This year it’s lots of red dead nettle and wood avens. 

I’m also doing a lot of work containing my natives that have really taken off. I don’t mind this at all though, I’ve been digging up my extra bee balm, columbine, wild strawberry, and virginia waterleaf to give to other gardeners starting out 👍

I just go in early spring and rip out what needs gone.  Because it's established,  very little makes it into the garden and the seed bank is now my plants, mainly rattlesnake masters and bluestem because they are crazy aggressive for me. 

I tried really hard to be strategic with levels of competition but I underestimated monarda. Next spring I will probably either split or cut back. I want to slowly establish big island beds in the yard and only have turf paths, so eventually I will have a place to spread these enthusiasts, but not there yet.

Weeding is required. A lot for me. My 1/2 acre is solid natives, front and back yards, and I live in a fancy neighborhood with mostly overly groomed lawns and certain “expectations,” so I try to keep the front from looking too out of control. The invasives, though, require constant vigilance. When I plant something new that I might not recognize later or in the spring, I stick a flag in the ground where it is with the plant name on it. It looks like Miss Dig comes to my yard all the time with all the little flags. After a year or two, I’ll start to recognize the little sprouts or some die and I can then pull the flags. Edit to add: I kill all the non-natives. They are evil. ;)

The main issue I have is all meadows eventually want to turn into forests . I tend to get tree of heaven, mulberry and black walnut saplings. They come from adjacent properties.

Spend so much time weeding first few years to give the perennials a shot. I’m out pretty much everyday at least grazing some weeds ripping and tossing out of the meadow area. Makes a LARGE difference

Second year on one of my yard plots. It’s really thick with coreopsis, rudbeckia, and bergamot. I’ve barely had to do any weeding on it this year. Another plot i managed and seeded differently with more grasses and since there aren’t really (any?) cool season native grasses it exploded with white clover, corn speedwell, and star of Bethlehem. I spent a few hours a day weeding for a while and got the weeds knocked back and now the little bluestem is finally growing in and it looks great. Will probably have the same issue next year unless I figure out some cool season plants to put in.

I live in central California (9b) and usually wait for the summer heat to do my weeding for me. I’ll rip out the larger perennial invasives by hand in late spring, but the chickweed and native miner’s lettuce I just leave because they crowd out the invasive grasses and by June they have died and formed a nice layer of water-retaining mulch. If they’re crowding out natives I just move them aside to make space for the desired plants. I let the clover and other heat-tolerant, mat-forming “weeds” grow over patches where there are no natives planted to help suppress the larger invasives and protect the soil ecosystem from our intense summer heat and drought, then pull them come fall when that job is much easier and so the tree leaves can fall directly on soil and create mulch/habitat for our native pollinators to lay their eggs.

The weeding cycle is all about working with your local climate and ecosystem. When I used to live on the coast in a less damaged ecosystem I did far more spring weeding of invasives to give the naturally growing natives space to thrive and because the heat and drought never got intense enough to kill them. Here in central CA there are almost no natives that grow without being intentionally planted, sadly, because the ecosystem has been completely altered by agricultural practices (datura is a happy exception). So now I just worry about protecting the natives I’ve planted, controlling perennial invasives, protecting the soil in unplanted spaces, and providing habitat for ground-dwelling native insects.

Less and less. Now that the meadow is firmly established. The weeds just kind of get lost in the weeds. So to speak.

There are always invasive and aggressives to be contained. Just because it’s native doesn’t necessarily mean it’s prepared to out compete in an artificial setting.

It entirely depends on the scale of the meadow/problem. If it's a little patch that is easily weeded, I'll be pretty tight with pulling everything out. If it's a medium-sized patch, I'll pull the big weeds that might pose a problem for my natives, but won't sweat the little stuff. If it's a huge patch like a half acre or more I don't even think about weeding invasives unless they're really big perennials.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) is a good example. If there's just a handful of them, I'm on them like a hawk pulling them to prevent them from going to seed. But if there's thousands of them I'm just not going to touch them. I'll never be able to stop them all from going to seed and they're biennials so will eventually lose out to my native perennials as long as I don't disturb the soil.

I have several acres of meadow. It stopped being lawn 20 years ago. I spot spray exotic invasive plants with Round Up about twice a summer. If it's not on the state exotic invasive list, I let it go.

I mow in April after the snow melts.

Trees saplings are difficult. I just mow them. There's a lot of stubs. I'm starting to weed wrench the stumps out.

I don't think I'll ever be rid of bindweed, so I've resigned myself to pulling it periodically. Other than that, I do want to give space to the less aggressive plants and control the more aggressive ones.

My chaos garden’s on its third year and well established but there is still tall fescue that I contend with. I go in and snip the seed heads into a bucket and leave the seed stalk shorter than the rest of the flowers. I leave the stalks because I read that dragonflies like having things like that to perch on and scan for prey.

We weee what know we don’t want. bindweed, dandelions, clovers those gotta go. The rest were mostly leaving unattended. We have a really small patch. Would love to burn the whole patch with a weed torch a few years down the line.

I just tiptoe through 5- 10 mins every day pulling up baby foes. It's an ongoing battle, but consistency is paramount.

At some of the prairie preserves and restorations I volunteer at invasive encroachment is a constant issue that needs to be fought. The weeding never ends really, just given the current state of invasives across the globe.

I find weeding to be enjoyable, or at least satisfying. So this works out for me.

Gardening is a lot of controlling, and weeding is pulling out something you don't like or something you found growing in the wrong place, like you said i have many seedlings from obedient plants, and echinacea, black eyed Susan, New England aster, my bee blam are crazy , and in the backyard i have tons of Solomon's seal and Virginia water leave , sometimes I give people, some time I pulled out , because this is a garden, if one plant over power and stress the whole picture I have to do something, like obedient plant they self seed and grow too fast and almost taken away my Blood roots and wild ginger , so I have to pull them out, by the way I do like Canadian anemone, if you are in Ontario GTA area I know I can take some lol

Definitely.  Dunno if mine established, and its a bit more cultivated than a proper prairie or meadow...lotsa mulch and more flowers than grass.  Various dandylions, chickweed, and a few others are my spring culprits.  By midsummer the flowers outcompete everything except maybe pokeweed.  River oats i planted, but those need taming too...

I planted a patch of strawberries and just let it go. It is pretty awesome! And they smother out everything else.

We just pull the dandelions before they take over

I’m on year three, and my meadow is too thick to do any weeding. I just mow in late winter. I eventually want to do a prescribed burn, but I have to get in touch with the local authorities to see how I can obtain a permit.

I’m on year 3 and the areas where my strawberry has spread as a ground cover I don’t really have to weed anymore tbh, in my shadier spot of my flower bed/yard meadow I’m trying to fill any open spots with ferns and soon to be sedges. And my perennial flowers do just fine intermingled with the strawberries and ferns and has a wonderful look to it. It’s not just looking at bare mulch anymore and it’s so full of life

I thin out new seedlings in the spring to prevent the rudbeckia and yarrow from pursuing their world domination agenda

Oh no, what did I miss on shredded mulch that you're obviously moving away from it???

I have gardens full of river rocks that I need to basically dig out of some of the soil, move closer back to the house, and then was planning on bringing in mulch for the garden starting about 12-18" away from the house (where the rocks will be).

....... But now your post has made me worried I shouldn't be bringing in mulch?! Ahhhh!

In the late winter I need to go in there and rip out some brambles and some dead Japanese silt grass other than that no.

I pull out things that are done and dead/dying. Right now the California Poppies are fading away so I will mulch the material into the ground to host the next set of blooms, whatever they may be.

We use a weed torch 👍

Not after the first 3 or 4 years. I do burn some years though. In my most established plots I don't see any non natives anymore.

I dig out big thistles and burdock but that's about it. I kinda gave up on the reed canary grass.

Zone 5b

I let the grass go to seed and over-seed with clover and grass mix to prevent gas from thinning.