Q: You have been talking about weed control in recent articles, but you have not addressed my problem. I have several kinds of large ornamental grass plants. They have many stems that form large clumps several feet across. Some of the ornamental grasses have sharp sandpapery edges to the leaves that make it difficult to reach into the clump.

There are weeds growing inside and around the clumps. There are lawn grasses, dandelions, thistles and others that I can't identify. How do I get the weeds when I can't pull them and can't spray them?

A: Ah, but you can pull and spray them. There are several steps to take and some of them are even backwards. To hand pull weeds in tall clumps like this, you walk up to the clump backwards and use your legs to spread the grass out of the way to each side, so that you can bend over and pull the weeds. Then slowly rotate around the clump, pushing the grass out of the way with your legs. You will need long pants, long sleeves and gloves for some of the sharp leaved grasses. I have pulled a lot of weeds using this method.

In cold climates, ornamental grasses go dormant for the winter. In the early spring, use a powered hedge clipper, chainsaw or hand pruner to cut the clump down to the crown. Give it a good crew cut, but don't scalp the crown of the plant. Cutting into the crown tissue will cause a bald spot where few grass stems will grow. Many times the center of the grass clump dies out creating a ring of grass instead of a clump. You can dig up some or the entire clump and recreate a clump.

While the clump has a crew cut, you can easily pull more weeds. At the same time, you can apply pre-emergent weed preventer. You can also spray broad-leaved weed killer to get rid of non-grass weeds. Lawn grasses are harder to pull, but this is the best time to find all of the runners and to pull them out.

In warm climates, ornamental grasses also go dormant, but not always at the same time. Figure out when each one is dormant and cut it down as described above and then do the appropriate weed control.

Ornamental grass clumps often flop over and shade the areas around the base of the plant, shading out most weeds. Since this is not happening around your plants, you can add several inches of mulch and pre-emergent weed control products such as Preen around the plants on a regular basis. Prevention is much better than trying to pull and spray these weeds.

Q: Help! My vegetable garden is being taken over by weeds. I have been using a hoe, but I recently cut down one of my tomatoes. I am about to give up on the garden for this year. Is there anything I can do?

A: Being taken over by weeds is probably the reason for most vegetable garden failures. The process to fix it starts in the spring, when the garden is planted. The use of lots of mulch, newspapers, weed barrier cloth and pre-emergent weed controls using corn gluten meal will stop or slow weed growth to a controllable level. Leaving bare soil exposed to the sun, water and nutrients will grow weeds for sure.

When weeds are small, hand pulling, spot spraying and hoeing all work, but when the weeds get out of control it is easy to give in. First, let me encourage you to keep at it, because fresh tomatoes and other vegetables are good for you physically, but also good for you mentally once you know that you've won and the weeds have lost.

Start small and rescue one tomato, bean, pepper and zucchini at a time. You can hoe the middle of an aisle between rows. Then, hand pull the weeds growing near the base of a plant. It is often useful to water the garden the day before you are going to hand pull the weeds, so the roots pull out easier. Pulling weeds the day after a rain is also a good time. Every time you go out to weed just think about the BLT, the stuffed green pepper or the fresh zucchini bread you are going to enjoy by rescuing your garden.

Email questions to Jeff Rugg at [email protected]. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.