Your worst enemy

jdee, I get those too, perhaps post that pic on the ID forum and we'll find out!

Chickweed! I stopped pulling it - only because I read it will die off in the summer heat. I used Preen on the front beds but....it lives!

-Kim

So the weed and feed might not have killed it after all, but the heat? lol And here I was thinking that was miracle working stuff.

1. Spiderwort - It's pretty and I just read (at killerplants.com) about how it's a natural geiger counter, but it's so hard to get rid of, it makes the top of my list. (It also has other medicinal properties and is quite the useful plant with many redeeming qualities. That does not mean I like it.)

2. Poison Ivy - Roundup works, but I can't clear the dead stuff away either, also deathly allergic.

3. I don't know what it's called, but it looks like a cross between poison ivy and wild strawberry: Three leaves, thorny pricklies all over on the stems, leaves, everywhere. Deeply rooted and you have to dig down really deep to make sure you get it all... yet somehow I always manage to miss a tiny chunk of root and it pops back up in the middle of my heliotropes or someplace...

I don't know what it's called, but there is a weed in the back of my yard that has, what I called as a child, "stickers" on it. Maybe some southern folks will know what I'm referring to.

edited because I can't spell. lol

This message was edited Apr 28, 2005 6:51 PM

Foxtails... doesn't matter what you use to kill the plant, or if you pull them up, they reseed like crazy.
I'm getting ready to cover the area with corn gluten and say so long to direct sowing of seeds for as long as it takes.

You mean foxtail lilies dovey??

My worst enemy is river rock!
Digging that stuff out is a pain! We were stupid enough to use it as "ground cover" and "weed repellant" (yeah right, it actually encouraged the weeds I think by protecting seeds!) 5 years ago when we moved in - living with the nightmare ever since. It takes at least an hour just to clear a little 3 by 5 foot area to plant.

Other "natural" or "not so bad as that darn rock" enemies here are goatheads (puncturevine), tumbleweeds (russian thistle), and MINT (the other bane of my gardening existence)! -C

Foxtails are highly different from foxtail lillies. I used to work for a vet, when I lived in CA and they were often seen inbetween the toes of the poor dogs..I learned to hate those things..
and Mobi...you are right, the roots of bindweed can, and do, go down for miles. I have some that I have let go ahead of me...it seems confined to one section of the yard, if it will stay there...but doesn't that stuff, like to go forth and conquer new lands?
Bermuda grass is what I hate, and it is everywhere! and nut grass is on my hit list too...

Red sorrel and chickweed. God has sent these pests to teach me endurance!

I wish I had lots of chickweed growing around here. No kidding! Chickweed is a wonderfully healing medicinal herb for the skin. I infuse it in olive oil along with other herbs and use it in my herbal balm and soap. One woman's weed is another woman's treasure. ;-D

Pigweed is a bad one. It just keeps popping up no matter what I do and there's so much of it! The grass is starting to grow up through the sides of the rather new driveway. It's amazing but still @#$% annoying!

Ok. I'm still a beginner, so please don't laugh. I was sweeping off the walkway, just going in a side to side motion. I swept some things into my garden, on purpose I might add, that have now started to sprout. Everyday, I'm out there pulling up weeds that I put there myself. lol So I guess the worst enemy to my garden is me. lol

You're not as bad as me when I was begining. I used to plant weeds because I either thought they looked like something else or because they caught my eye. I'm STILL pulling them up!

I know what you mean. There are some really pretty weeds out there.

Bindweed. Can't get rid of the stuff. All I do is pull any vines I see so they never get a chance to flower. I dug up a bunch of their root system and was surprised how thick it was.

Star-of-Bethlehem -- and I think it might be your white flower JDee. Sure looks like it.

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/495/index.html

Do you have what looks kind of like lush grass first, then that starts to lay down and the flowers come?
When you dig it up, is it a bulb? (probably many bulblets in a clump)

It is like a sea through our garden beds - and turns out to be toxic to boot. I've gotten rid of about 1/1000000th after many hours! Buckets and buckets of bulbs, and that's barely a start.

It sure looks like it. I haven't dug any up, but just pulled the one I'm holding in the picture. Most of it is gone, so I guess teh weed and feed worked.

Opps!

This message was edited May 10, 2005 1:14 PM

What?

How in the world did that post get on this thread? It was posted to a different thread. I wondered where it went to after I posted it and it didn't show up. Strange. I'm going to go edit it out.

jdee,
I'll bet your star-of-bethlehem comes right back next spring. Hope not, but betting so. Please let us know.

I let it go cause the flowers were pretty, kind of idly watching it for 2 seasons. Suddenly this year it is massively everywhere. And there are just a zillion bulblets. So if you don't want a sea of it, you may want to start digging the bulbs out wherever you can.

My other worst worst is honey milkweed. Just like bindweed in its behavior and persistence:

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/75/index.html

Thanks for the tip. I had noticed that other yards in the neighborhood also have it, but now it's gone. If it doesn't have a very long life, It probably won't bother me to have it for a short time every year. I'll let you know what happens next year.

I'm surprised no one has mentionned Burdock! It's all over my pastures, and the burrs travel on the cats, the coyotes, the deer and everything else. I dig and dig and still it comes up. I know in Japan it's a delicacy called Gobo. I just wish a japanese family would move next door! I wouldn't mind so much if there were even one thing about the plant that was pretty. All i can say is the cats like to weather out summer rain squalls under the big wide leaves. So I guess it can stay. For now.

For me, it's hackberry seedlings. My neighbor has a hackberry tree that drops seeds all over the place--in the plants and in the yard. If you pull them up during the first year's growth, they're easy to uproot. But there are THOUSANDS of them. If you mow them down, they just keep coming back and the roots just keep growing deeper. I've had some that I dug up with roots over a foot long when the stems were only about 2 or 3 inches high (although they did look like little bonzai trees). I have a pile of rocks about a foot high that are against a brick wall, and there is a hackberry that has grown up between the wall and the pile of rocks!

I love weeds. Weird. But I am beginning to dislike our bermuda grass now that I am making growing beds. But some things that are in my way, I really dislike... Yucca, Mesquite, bindweed, goat heads, grass burrs, burr clover, most thistles, and just discovered....

TUMBLE MUSTARD!

Tumble mustard? I wonder if we mean the same thing?

I HATE this! http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/2431/index.html

Lol, "Kill any plant on site". You guys should read my comment.

Hilarious comment!

Nope, not it. I would take a pic, but it already got bagged (with two or three other smaller ones) and taken away!

Will take a pic if I ever see another. Meanwhile, maybe another time I can scan the photo from my ID book...

The only way it even resembles a mustard, is the very small four petal-ed yellow flower. It is low growing, sort of in a bush, or tumbleweed shape. And when it goes to seed, it separates from the root and tumbles away!

Edited for spelling.

This message was edited May 18, 2005 12:00 AM

How about crown vetch? Someone planted it on my place - probably as a ground cover. Its got roots miles
deep. Its on a hillside I'm trying to clear to put in a rock garden. I dug it all out in the spring (as best I could.
There are a lot of rocks on the hillside and those roots are deep!) I sprayed with round up a number of times
over the summer and then in the fall dug up whatever remained. Its still coming back. Argh.

And I actually planted a few Star of Bethlehem bulbs a couple of years ago. Sounds like I should dig 'em up
or at least cut 'em down before they seed.

I wonder if this is it? http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/70176/index.html

A lot of western gardeners complain about this but being here in the North, I would LOVE to see one! I can imagine, a gun fight at noon, silence, that whistle they always have and then a tumble weed goes by. Lol. I watch too many movies.

Arum. Someone in the neighborhood planted it years ago and it has spread to all of the 45-50 houses in the neighborhood. It covers our gardens until March, growing so tall that we can hardly see our azaleas bloom. The gophers don't want it, Roundup won't kill it, and if you try to dig it up, you just loosen all of the little bulbs on the big one and end up with 50 more. These are half-acre gardens, folks. They're a sea of Arum, a veritable plague of Arum, for months on end.

Other than that, I spend what feels like half of my day pulling or digging up blackberries, ivy, and baby scrub oaks, buckeyes, and black walnuts. Still, if a genie appeared while I was gardening to grant me a wish, I probably would wish there was no such thing as Arum instead of asking for something more practical.

So glad i've never heard of Arum!

Nope, not regular tunbleweeds, I don't mind those! (Read my comment) Tumble Mustard. I will get more info on it for you when its not such a good day to plant. :-)

Here is some info, though mine looked healthier :-) edited to add the links i forgot!

tumble mustard — Sisymbrium altissimum

http://www.weedscience.org/in.asp

http://ippc2.orst.edu/mint/tumbmustard.htm

http://www.dclunie.com/eshelton/wildflow/FLOWERS/ymust/ymust.html

http://ghs.gresham.k12.or.us/science/ps/nature/basin/4petal/must/sisymbrium/jimhill.htm

The whole gang of mustards...
http://ghs.gresham.k12.or.us/science/ps/nature/gorge/4petal/must/mustard.htm

I know, I know, too much information! More than I EVER wanted to know about mustards! LOL :-)

This message was edited May 18, 2005 1:02 PM

I'll do a quick ranking:

1) Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) - My gardens are bordered by woodlands and this stuff just will not quit. A few years ago it got up into a hemlock and looked quite beautiful.... until the hemlock started to go south. Out went the creeper and back came the hemlock.

2) Chickweed - No comment necessary with this stuff.

3) Deer - but not always because of their feeding habits, though one did eat all the flower heads off of my Echinacea last year, right as they were beginning to bloom. Maybe it felt a cold coming on, I don't know. Last fall, a fawn got caught in my garage and started to thrash around. When it got loose, instead of dashing straight for the woods, it decided to jump into one of the yews that screen the front of the house, and shattered a branch at the base. The branch is recovering, but I can't shape it properly, and it looks awful this year. I would have preferred that this fawn eat more Echinacea instead.

Here is a picture of a turnip going to seed, and it greatly resembles the tumble mustard weed I found. Haven't found any since (still crossing my fingers!)

Indian Mock-Strawberries!
They have taken over my front lawn.
Anyone know what I can use to get rid of them?

#1 Blackberries - so misbehaved - they wander into the asparagus patch and are so difficult to get rid of permanently!

Clover and grass are up there but the most annoying is Aegopodium and Houttanuyia Cordata Chameleon. They should come with a warning that you are forced to sign absolving the seller of all curses if it spreads like it does on us!

You guys never heard of Fusilade for grasses. Sold under the brand name Poast. Mix it according to directions with a little emusifiable oil and over spray all your flower beds. Will kill johnson grass, bermuda grass, crabgrass, any "true" grass. Biggest exception is nut grass, or nut sedge. (not a "true" grass). This stuff works great. Won't kill anything but a true grass. Daylilies, monkey grass, mondo grass......won't harm them at all. Just soak everything in your beds. After a week or so nothing. After two weeks still nothing. "That guy lied to me" But after two weeks the grass blades start to turn red then they gradually die all the way to the roots. All your shrubs, perennials, and annuals won't have a mark on them.

John

Thanks, John. This sounds like an amazing discovery. I'll definitely try it.

Its also sold as Ortho's Grass-B-Gon.

John