Manual weeding is one of the most tedious exercise we often carry out in our vegetables field, it has never been easy but we do not have a choice. Had it been that hoes can be used for this exercise it will make the work faster and easier but that is equally not possible.
The challenge here is this, vegetables are not planted like corns or pepper which are often planted in row with some gaps in between them. Vegetables are planted by spreading them across the fields on their own beds. Both the vegetables and grasses often germinate and grow together. When vegetables are in their very tender age within days after planting you cannot not engage them in any form of weeding if at all there is grasses in the farm.
While trying to pull off the grasses vegetables you may end up getting pulled off as well. And since they are not some sort of plant that can be transplanted they wither away as soon as their roots is off the ground
The vsat
The best solution to all of these is by planting your vegetables in such a way that grasses will not overwhelm them. To do this you have to ensure that you deploy enough grasses prevention methods before planting the veggies. Weed every grasses, till the soil properly and sometimes apply a little of non hazardous herbicides to the soil.
When this is done before planting, it takes a good while before grasses will germinate in the fields where vegetables have been planted.
While the veggies are in their tender stage you allow them to grow to at least 3weeks before attempting to pull up any grasses that may have grown with the veggies.
After we harvested some veggies for soup on Sunday I realized that the field is bushy already and was already calling attention . Since yesterday we have engaged inanual weeding to clean up the veggies farm so that the ones remaining in the field can continue to grow properly.