Your guide to hoeing your garden to keep it weed-free

Every garden has weeds, so every gardener needs a hoe. If you love to grow shrubs, flowers and vegetables, it's a sad fact of life that you'll also be contending with their not-so-lovable relatives. Hoeing is one important technique for keeping weeds at bay.

• Used wisely, a sharp, long-handled hoe makes quick work of young weeds, and you can use a hoe to mound up soil around the bases of your plants, too.
• For delicate work or tight spaces, many types of small hoes are available, including heart-shaped, rectangular and three-pronged ones. These narrow tools penetrate just about everywhere and can be used between flowers and vegetables without the usual risk of bruising.

• Use a hoe with a handle at least 1.4 metres long so you can work standing straight — not bent over, which can strain your back.
• Keep the blade sharp by filing it often with a steel file.
• Sever weeds by sliding the blade just below them, parallel to the surface.

You'll do a better job of chopping out weeds, and any leftover plant parts will be further damaged as they cook in the sun.

While hoeing to uproot weeds, you expose more soil to the air, which lets more moisture evaporate.

• In very dry conditions, use pruning shears to clip off weeds at the soil surface and follow up with water-retentive organic mulch.

• One weed you should never hoe is common purslane, a ground-hugging annual pest.

Its tiny seeds remain in the soil and germinate if exposed by cultivation, and its fleshy, water-retaining stems can form new roots even after the plants are hoed up.

• Pull out seedlings by hand and carry them out of the garden to dry.