Wednesday, 01 June 2011 07:09
A pernicious weed is a notorious criminal that once established, becomes unusually invasive and won't go away. One of the best ways to become a greener gardener is to keep these bad boys under control with regular attention. Failure to do so is why chemical weed killers are still in use.
If bindweed bedevils your summer garden, it will rapidly twine up your tomatoes and corn. Try to pull it up and the stems break off at the soil level as a mature plant can spread a dense network of roots 20 to 30 feet in diameter. Try to dig it up the wrong way and you'll only scatter rootlets far and wide. Each tiny bit of severed root can grow into a whole new plant. This is just one example why knowing your weeds personally is key to freeing your property of repeat offenders.
Spring is a pivotal time when good garden-keeping can save you a season of trouble. An ounce of weed prevention is indeed worth a pound of labor or chemical cure.
The primary divisions of weeds, like other garden plants, relate to when they reproduce. Each is annual, perennial or biennial, and some heinous individuals reproduce by more than one means.
Annuals, such as star thistle, grow for a single year from seed, mature, then set seed for the next year. Some annual weeds can produce up to 250,000 seeds a year, explaining the gardener's phrase "One year's seeds is seven years' weeds". Clearly, it is important to pull this plant before it flowers.
A biennial such as teasel grows from seed but rarely flowers the first year. It dies back for winter and grows from the roots the second spring. That's when it flowers and sets seed, then the plant dies.
For all these reasons and more, do not neglect your weeds in the early part of the season. Rainy days are perfect for pulling weeds due to the soft soil.
In a perfect world, weeds and their seeds will cook to death in your compost pile, but if you don't get it just right, they may indeed survive to re-infest the garden when you use the finished compost.
Success requires you get to know the pernicious weeds personally. A national resource is the Noxious and Invasive section of USDA Plants, a virtual rogues' gallery of undesirables at
plants.usda.gov. The excellent online photography makes it much easier to identify unwanted plants.
The Caucus once again will feature a "Weed of the Month" to help residents identify pernicious weeds in our valleys. We will also host our second annual "Weed Eradication" day later in the summer. Together we can help return our valleys to their original pristine condition.
