Allotments 4 All
Produce => Non Edible Plants => Topic started by: Garden Manager on August 08, 2004, 16:44:23
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In other words which weed has given the most trouble.
i ask because in my garden, certain weeds have been particularly sucessfull inmy garden this year.
Apart from the perennial headache that is bindweed, creeping buttercup, willowherb and spurge (euphorbia) have been a particular nuisance.
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(1) Groundsel is everywhere in my lottie but thankfully it pulls up easily.
(2) Bindweed is a big pest and has a habit of tripping a person up when they aren't looking :D
Debs.
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The bindweed is a pain, but the marestail is worse. Lifted a crazy paving path and left the remaining mud - had a mega attack of the thistles. I also have nettles that are 6' high - OK as long as they stay in the 'wild' bit for the butterflies.
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I only have a little garden and it is very tightly planted. Most weeds don't stand a chance. However, I do fight with those long bits of grass missed by the mower that try to take hold in the flower beds!
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hmmmm...what I have found rather alarmingly is that this year a few (but even one's too much) bits of ground elder have appeared. Been in this house for 4 years now and only appeared this year. I'm not sure how it spreads itself, other than invasive roots obviously, but these have been in quite different spots, does it seed? puzzled.
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Not sure if it does or not, Kerry. I know Japanese Knotweed doesnt -only propagates itself vegetatively. Certianly underground stems is the main way Ground elder spreads.
I dont have any of the real thug weeds in my garden (thankfully), though i did pull up what suspiciousl;y looked like ground elder growing through the fence from next door.I hope it wasnt though. Cant bear the thoughtof the garden infested with that stuff >:(.
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Dandelions in the lawn seem to be prolific this year (probably dont help having a playing field at rear of garden) and...
My nextdoor neighbours passion flower which keeps growing underneath my decking.Depite my attempts at thwarting its movement into my garden-it still grows! Roundup kills the shoots,but there are many more waiting in the wings to take their place...
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I reclaimed some land from the bracken and brambles and planted some cabbage. The only thing is I have had a weeks hols and now cant tell the cabbage from the little weeds that have appeared >:(
Sam
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Hmmmmm......
1. Bindweed
2. Thistles
3. Bindweed
4. Nettles
5. Bindweed.
If somebody could find a viable commercial use for that b****y bindweed I'd be stonking rich!!!!!!
(They'd better find it quick 'cos my multi-pronged attack of Round-up, conflagration & rotovator means I could be destroying millions!!!)
CC
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In other words which weed has given the most trouble.
i ask because in my garden, certain weeds have been particularly sucessfull inmy garden this year.
Apart from the perennial headache that is bindweed, creeping buttercup, willowherb and spurge (euphorbia) have been a particular nuisance.
Just to update, now add Mysotis (Forget me nots). The next-door neighbours garden is full of the things now they've spread rapidly into my garden.
Easily pulled up I know, but its just the quantity. They have even invaded the front lawn!
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The weeds that I have most trouble with on my plot, this year and for the past two years are marestails, couch grass and bindweed. It is hard to pick the most successful as they all seem to do well. Marestails are so indestructable, whatever you do they seem to survive. The best I can do is keep them to a minimum. Couch grass, we have won several battles with, but it is not totally irradicated. My allotment plot fence is surrounded by bindweed which grows up it. The roots of this are like something from a science fiction novel and I fight the battle with it constantly. I wish some of my veggies had such a determination to flourish :D busy_lizzie
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Weeds on the allotment do not bother me much as an hour with the hoe does wonders, but I have a terrible time with wild garlic in the garden, weedkiller, digging it up and hoeing, will not get rid of it. One little bulblet left in the plot will colonise in a month.
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Down on the allotment it is bindweed and marestail. At home in the garden it is groundelder, which is everywhere >:(
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Hi Richard, i think the worst weed in my garden is Dandelions & Bindweed they both came in with a load of old farmyard manure (thats what you get for getting manure from an Organic farmer) still the plants loved the food
later
windy
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They all seem to do pretty well on the plot. I have forget me nots and poppies all over the plot Richard, but I don't mind, they bring colour and are easily oiked out or hoed away if they are in the. I have couch, marestail, bindweed, thistles, brambles, dock, stinging nettles and something with a huge white fleshy root, kinda like Alexanders (sp?) or horseradish. Jack told me he used to grow it to feed the rabbits and he told me the name, which I promptly forgot!
Don't get weeds in the garden...gloat gloat...well I do, but not many to be honest, so densly planted there isn't the room for weeds! The only thing that seems to wander into the beds at home is the lawn!
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Lucky you EJ - well in the garden at least.
have you tried some form of edging/mowing strip for the lawn to stop the grass encroaching into the beds?
I use bricks or pavers to edge my lawns
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pretty big area of lawn really so would be on the pricey side, also have always worried about a hard edging thinking of the kids playing out there, falling and cracking their head on something like a brick edging. I don't mind the grass wandering, it is so easy to pull out, which I do as I go around edging my lawn and also it means I get down and personal with my lovely plants.
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Fair enough. ;D
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Hi All,
Selfheal!!!!! in a lawn I look after for an aged friend.
Tried everything. As I suspect the soil is extremely poor, the real solution is grub the whole thing out & start again.
Any comments?
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My problem is tht I don`t know what the things are called?
Think I will have to take some pics and ask you lot on here.
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We only own a tiny garden and the most annoying weed seems to have been nettles. Although they are very easily pulled up, roots and all, to grow even stronger. We have lots of poppies but consider them to be "friendly" plants, so they stay wherever they grow as we both like them.
I can't wait to grow the seeds my good friends of A4A have sent us! Also, applied for an allotment, but no news yet :(
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In no particular order...
bindweed
bindweed
and more bindweed :(
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My most problematic weeds are dandelions in the lawn, and hairy bittercress everywhere. The bittercress even seems to grow in the depths of winter, it seeds when 'indecently young' (as Christopher Lloyd says), and is so fiddly to pull up - if you leave it til it's a decent size it's seeded before you know where you are.
Sue
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at home it has been ground elder untill this year when a varigated mint took over got between 6 roses did look lovely if unreal. Lottie bineweed the pink and white one, wild poppies pop up but a creeping small leaf fleshy plant has grown so well over winter dont know what it is but easy to pull up and the hens at home love it so cannot complain realy.
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Andy, look at www. dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk may be a good help.
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Hello all
I've come to this rather late but horsetail has been the worst thing since we moved in 4 years ago and pops up year after year. Couch grass is also annoying - how does it always come up right in the middle of a prized plant? The most prolific though are hairy bittercress and chickweed both of which come up every year like cress! Plantains in the lawn are a pain. Also last year found a couple of infant nettles (where did they come from?) and a single bindweed which seems to have been an isolated incident I pray.
Cheers, Iain
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Ground Elder has spread through my back garden in the last couple of years, to the point where it is now invading the lawn despite my best efforts to pull it out on a regular basis.
Many years ago I planted a few violets in my front garden when my mum was moving house. There are now more violets in the lawn than in the borders!
Still, it looks pretty when they flower in the spring and at least it looks green from a distance the rest of the time ;D
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Yes i am pretty tollerant of weeds in the lawn. I dont fuss ove it like some people. I will take out big broad leaved weeds like dandelions, but basicaly if its healthy and green i done worry too much,
The oly problem comes in a prolonged dry spell in summer. The grass tends to go the colour of straw, but the weeds stay stubbornly green! ::)
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Dandelion, dandelion, dandelion - they are coming again all fresh and green and long rooted and I hate them - not just the smell but the myriad of wee parachutes that home in on our lottie from every direction later in the year.
Don't get me wrong we have our fair share of docks, marestail, etc but oh those dastardly dandelions!
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Grass, grass and grass.
We have stinging nettles too but as they are a good companion plant I leave them in, or cut them for fertiliser.
There's lots of other random flowering weeds too whcih are the biggest pain, and thistles.... though as I am moving off my plot i will have to see what comes up once I have removed all the grass from the new patch.
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I'm lucky not to have marestail in my own garden, but in one I look after it is a constant companion! I have noticed that in an area of the border where I put in a large drift of Astilbe, the marestail seems to be very weak and in part missing. Do any of you know if Astilbe give off any toxins into the soil that may explain this, Have you noticed this in your gardens?
Or did I do such a good job of getting the roots out when I planted the Astilbe that I cleared the Marestail! (ho ho ho!)
Brian
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Couch.Couch. ....... (edited by admin, but rest assured it was repeated allot)+
a little couch :'(
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Hi
Couch grass and odd patches of bindweed.
Marestail.
Does contaminate the site at one end hopefully
it won't move further down.
One old fella told me "it doesn't like its neck stretching!"
When questioned further he went on to say that he had
read that if you take the growing tips and gently pull without
breaking the stem it will kill the plant...he says it works.
I haven't any marestail so I can't vouch for any success.
I do realise that some of you may have a serious
infestation and 'stretching marestail necks' might
be a little time consuming... maybe worth a go though..
nothing to lose... could be very therapeutic
Happy stretching ;)
Derek
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Ground elder! I've cleared the bed so I can have a good go at it and blitzed it with
glyphos when it was in full leaf, then dug up the spagetti- like roots, waited until
more green showed then weed killed it again, then again. Spring has arrived (well sort of)
and it's coming up again. I've been advised to grup up the border and put it down to
lawn and the regular mowing should get rid of it. I very much doubt it
Wardy
PS what's happened to the page settings? Or is it just mine?
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the merry tiller broke the board with his long ONE word ;) :D
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Ah I understand. I thought my pc was on the blink ;D
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My latest problem weed is now the native arum (not zantedescia sp?), otherwise known as lords and ladies i believe. It seems to seed all over the place and its deep corms and fragile stems make it v difficult to remove. The worst patch of it is amoungst my autumn raspberries. I tried 'painting' some systemic weedkiller on the leaves, but this has done no good and if anything made them grow even stronger! It now seems to have colonised nearly every bed and border in the garden!
I know some people grow this plant, but i just want to get rid of it!!! >:(
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Er... at this moment in time, all of them!!
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i have a bane with bindweed at the moment. after having cleared the corner behind the rhubard of rubble and loads of broken glass, i dug that bit over to losen the soil and removed lots of bindweed roots. this was before the recent growth spurt.
last saturday, i saw two tiny shoots between the rhubarb - easily taken out. however, when i checked under my cloche to see how things were coming along, i noticed i had been cultivaing bindweed in one half :( fortunately, i hadnt sown anything there. not so fortunately, it took me over two hours to clear the roots which were attached to three tiny shoots!
so i will have be on the lookout for this stuff throughout the year. i feel though as if i have made much progress, after all, i must have removed about a mile of roots so there should be far less weed this year, right?
someone tell me i am right, please!
svea
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trouble is svea, every little bit of root you miss will potentialy grow into a new plant so the problem can get worse before it gets better. You really do need to keep on digging out roots as they grow. You will eventualy reduce the problem to a managable level!
So, anyone got any tips on getting rid of my arums? Please? :-\
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At this time of year-sycamore seedlings which pop up everywhere and dandylions in summer.
Suppose it serves me right for living near fields with loads of sycamore trees... ;)
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My "best" weed is Dock. I can grow it for England. I have have dug out all the deep roots but the soil must have a huge bank of the devils. Fat hen is another but it is easily pulled up and goes in the compost
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Since I have a v.small garden and I'm always scratching about I'm forever trying to pull the oxalis. It gets everywhere and covers all my wee plants. However I went out the other day and guess what I bought.....yes....some more oxalis but on a very large scale and with the most beautiful burgundy leaves
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Never ending battle with marestail in the garden, when we took over the house the garden was full of the stuff and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.
At the lottie the main problem is dandelions which I think will also be ongoing because a chap gave up 10 plots not far from us and they are totally covered with them now so as fast as we get them up they'll reseed. Still it keeps us out of mischief.
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I used to get enormous flushes of weeds all the time; after six years that's no longer much of a problem as most of the viable seeds seem to have germinated. My worst weed now that I've largely sorted out the couch and the bindweed is ground elder. I get lots of docks sprouting, but at least they stay in one place and don't spread. I used to get a lot of Himalayan balsam but that's easy to deal with; it's shallow rooted and the seeds only remain viable for a couple of years, so I don't get many coming up now. You just keep pulling it before it flowers.
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Mares Tail. Means you have water deep, deep down under your plot. A tremendous nuisance but does't do any harm. Bind weed! A pain in the butt and, like ground elder,just have to keep digging out the root as deep as you can, year after year if you want to stay green.
Dandelions are easier, just fork deep and you will get the r
oot out!
Oh whoops! Oxalis! tiny, tiny bulbs at the bottom of each leaf! Plant it, you'll never get rid of it! Very pretty but a pain if you are trying to grow other things! The burgandy leaved ones are the worst for propogating themselves!
Gardenantics, the astilbe loves water so maybe it's taking more than the mare's tail needs- perhaps!
:D
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DANDELIONS DONATED BY A NEARBY NEIGHBOUR (Don't start me on that rant again) I am glad to see that I am not the only one who doesn't know the names of weeds. Seriously it is the dandelions that give me the trouble.. as for the others I don't suppose I could pronounce their names let along spell them ;D Night all. Lorna
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;D Hi all, Well as usual I have two. Bindweed & groundelder. I keep on top of them, but can't quite get rid of them >:( >:( I know I'm not alone on this!!!!!
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bindweed was big problem at lottie last year but so far this year my beds aren't too bad. It is controllable anyway. My nightmare this year is buttercup! It is everywhere and impossible to get out of the hard ground. My son thinks it is lovely and keeps picking the flowers for me and can't understand why I keep hacking at it with spades and forks!
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What sort of buttercup? If it's the creeping buttercup I have it's a menace, you just have to keep on clearing it out, and don't let it flower.
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Down on my lottie the weeds hardest to deal with are masses of bind weed that attacks my fruit bushes, and so much horsetail, you wouldn't believe it, but one of the most annoying weeds have is FAT HEN. I know its easy to hand weed, but you just have to turn your back on a new weed, sorry seed bed
and there is the most uniform covering of the stuff an absolute carpet, looking very like the seeds that are coming up . It drives me mad!!!! Ahh thats better
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Ive got a bit of everything- dandelion, dock, buttercup, thistle and many more that i cant identify- but i have found a cheap, eco friendly weedkiller- Vinegar.
Tryed it on a sample group of weeds- it has worked best on the buttercup and dandelion.
Most successful weed- i will grant that to the dandelion- didnt think i had any (new plot) in feb/march now ive got loads. Im going to try making dandelion coffee
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I was told by my old neighbour to put salt on dandelions, got rid of few in my lawn donated by my unfriendly neighbour (the dandelions not the salt!!!) I have also read about a book which lists all the dozens of things that vinegar is good for. I think my eldest daughter has got the book. Must ask her to lend it to me. Lorna
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Buttercups, nettles, grass.
We have a big piece of local authority land between us and the road.
The LA mows it once a year.
So my neighbour mowed it every week, and sprayed ALL the weeds out of it: a huge patch of green, close-mowed grass: boring.
We were very sad when he died four weeks ago. He was a bit irascible, but a very good neighbour: I liked him a lot.
Now I mow the grass weekly.
It's already covered in daisies and dandelions: looks wonderful!
The little cranesbills are growing through and showing blue: there's a lovely yellow vetch: and several colourful things I don't recognise.
A silver lining?
I shall miss him, though.
Our own sward (can't call it a lawn) has dozens of species in it and I'll gladly keep weeding them out of the veg patch just to see them in the grass.
Except the nettles.
and the grass.
and the d****d buttercups.
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I have just been down to my lottie to water came home as it has started to pour with rain, but while I was there another very very annoying best weed was making it's presence felt,and that is the Jerusalem artichoke, I thought I had dug all of it out ,(previous holder had used as wind break.) I filled five dustbin sacks with the darn stuff, but it's back looking incredibly virile healthy and strong, and the only wind break facility it is offering.... well I expect you all know.
Katy
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mares tail.i think it stretches the length of lincolnshire from clairenpaul in the north to me 30 miles south >:(
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Millions of Ash seedlings. But at least they are easy to pull up.
Granddaughter is coming over next weekend, thats a good pocket money earner for her. Price per seedling picked is coming down, have just checked plot, millions more up its been raining.
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you'll be skint nan! ;D
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yarrow.
Loads of it. Grows very fast.
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I also have loads of 'wild' Geums. Not a problem though as they are easy to pull up or move into a border.
Sometimes a 'weed' turns out to be something better. :)
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Superman.. Oh boy can children/grandchildren get expensive. 10 year old Grandson's Dad told him he would give him £2 if he got all his spelling correct (they were a bit difficult) Result 10out of 10 next lot £1.50 10 out of 10. It is now a weekly sum of £1. as he has gone 10 weeks on the trot with results 10 out 0f 10. He is saving for when we go to Isle of Wight on 11th June :)Lorna
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Interested in the vinegar idea - do you just pour it on neat? Does it kill the roots too?
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Nettles, dandelions, herb robert and dock here..........Been out this afternoon pulling a few weeds.
I've been advised to pull off dandelion flowers before they turn to seed, so they can't blow away everywhere, then get rid of the weed itself later.
I've got buttercups this year too, although I'm not sure where they've come from, as they weren't there last year ???
I rather like them, so I expect I'll let some of them stay.