Kitkemistä

Kitkemistä is the act of removing unwanted vegetation from cultivated land, gardens, and other managed green spaces to reduce competition for water, nutrients, and light. In Finnish, the related noun is kitkeminen, and kitkemistä is the partitive form used when describing the activity. The practice spans manual, mechanical, and cultural methods and is central in both organic and conventional farming as well as in home gardening.

Techniques include manual pulling of weeds by hand or with small tools; use of hoes or cultivators; and mechanical weeders that loosen and uproot weeds. Cultural methods include mulching with organic or synthetic materials and growing cover crops to suppress weeds between main crops. Chemical controls, such as herbicides, are used in many systems but are often minimized in organic farming and in ecological agriculture through integrated weed management.

Economic and environmental aspects: Kitkemistä aims to protect yields, improve soil moisture and nutrient availability for crops, and reduce the need for mineral fertilizers by limiting weed competition. However, intensive weeding can disturb soil structure and increase erosion, while herbicide use raises environmental concerns. Best practices emphasize timing, local conditions, and combining methods to maintain soil health and biodiversity.

In practice, kitkemistä is common in vegetable gardens, field crops, and horticultural settings, as well as in community and allotment gardens, where it is often performed regularly during the growing season.

See also: Weeding.