Hi! Farmer Hun here, reporting from Reno where, ok, my garden is finally starting to grow a little. So far this year I’ve learned a lot of Lessons and not eaten very much Food. Also it is still snowing intermittently, but things are starting to grow…

Delicious kale, my favorite food

red mustard ... young lettuce

Also growing: tons of weeds. Weeds that I am dispatching handily with my Super Easy Trick! This is gardening 101, kids.

What you need:

• Spade
• Small, young weeds (for older, established weeds you’ll have to do it the hard way, and curse yourself for not catching them younger)
• Nice dry soil (skip watering in the morning)

How it’s done:

do they know they're about to die?

1. Assess weeds. Make sure you don’t have any good things mixed in with your bad things. I killed a whole row of carrots this way.

2. Hold the spade at an angle and scrape it across the bed so it pulls up about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch of dirt. It will take all the weeds with it, cutting them off below the soil surface so they’re less likely to regrow.

3. Do it again. MESS THOSE WEEDS UP.

4. Don’t water for the rest of the day, if you can avoid it.

You can do a whole bed in five minutes this way. You’re welcome!

Hey looka thar! If you have a big garden, they make a tool for this.

It’s called a hula hoe or a stirrup hoe, and it cuts both ways so you can easily scratch off the top layer of weeds without even bending your back.

If you want something better than a spade, Tara recommends a Gama Hoe or scraper. She uses the one pictured at right in her own garden.