A very crucial and annoying thing that we all must do if we have a garden, is get rid of weeds. This is one of the tasks I HATE the most. In past years, I would try the “ignore it and it will go away” technique. Let me tell you from experience, this does NOT work and just makes things so much worse. Even if you are super busy, you HAVE to make time for this or else you will pay for it later.
Because most of my gardens have veggies mixed in with the flowers, I can’t just spray indeterminately. The only method that I can actually do is pull and remove the offenders.
People have told me in the past to get rid of the weeds as soon as they sprout. That works to a point. The problem is I have a lot of seeds planted all over the place, so it is hard to tell if what is coming up is something I want or something that needs to go away. You can see below that unless you knew exactly what you planted and where, it can be difficult to know what to pull. I have gotten good at recognizing some of the regular offenders that pop up, but it still can be tricky.
Usually now I just wait until the plants get to be an inch or two tall before I go through and pull what is not supposed to be there. That generally works well to only get rid of what I want and retain my baby plants which I actually wanted to grow.
One caution here is make sure to ALWAYS wear gloves. I know it sounds obvious, but I have tried to do this before and ended up with scratched, cut, and hurt hands. Also, sometimes I am allergic to the weeds and get rashes and hives. I’ve even had some serious reactions from pulling weeds and this could have been prevented by just wearing gloves. I recently got my hand stuck to a blackberry bush and ended up getting a splinter/thorn stuck deep in my finger. It really hurt and took about 2 months to finally get it out. I also recommend wearing long sleeves to keep your arms free from scratches as well.
I spent a few hours yesterday pulling weeds in my long planter beds. My longest planter (~55ft long) had a bunch of these weeds (in photo above) with huge needle spikes all over them. Even with the gloves, they ended up poking me a bit. I believe I got about 99% of them removed from the garden.
Another type that is taking over my western planter bed is a vine variety called bindweed that is SO INVASIVE! Last year it tried to take down all my plants, and even covered half of my apricot tree. When I pulled the plants, anywhere they broke, a white liquid came out which would burn my skin when it touched me. No fun. I got a bunch of these out, but likely will be pulling these vines weekly for the rest of the summer.
Above is the same garden spot after I pulled all of the bindweed. You can actually see my plants growing now, that were all hidden underneath the vines. Had I left the bindweed to continue growing, all of my plants would have died, or at a minimum, had been stunted in growth significantly. This same spot had some beautiful asparagus growing in it. But last year, I didn’t pull the weeds, and the bindweed destroyed my established asparagus. I planted a few new asparagus plants this spring, but it will take a few years to get back to a healthy and thriving garden again.
Sometimes the invasive plants can be something that we actually planted. When I bought a Purple Mexican Petunia bush (Ruellia simplex) at my local hardware store, I thought the purple flowers were pretty. Little did I know that it would spread, spread and spread some more until it would take over large sections of my planter beds. Originally it said it would be about a foot wide and three feet tall. Yeah, no. It is about eight feet wide and continuing to spread year by year. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of buying two of these. Sigh. So now I am trying to pull up these thick roots and control this plant that is convinced the whole planter is its territory. I might just need to get a shovel out this fall and dig up everything I can to stop this.
The last type of invasive plants in my garden are ones that I am actually happy about and am encouraging to get bigger. They are my irises that I’ve had for about seven years now. They once were little, small things, and are slowly and systematically taking over parts of my garden. But they are BEAUTIFUL, and I don’t care if they take over the whole thing. I just love their flowers (see below) and would never separate them, only if to move them to another area to spread there. So, all invasive plants are not something that have to be controlled and pulled up. It really is just a matter of preference of what you want to grow, how quickly it spreads, and space limitations.
Remember that weeds and other invasive plants have to be delt with promptly and regularly. Set aside some time weekly, or at a minimum monthly to pull out any offenders. Your plants need the space and nutrients that are getting taken away by the weeds. I’d love to hear what types of invasive plants you have in your yard, and any techniques/systems you have to eliminate them. Please comment below with your information.
I have to say it my heart hurt for you when I read that your established asparagus got wiped out from the invasive plant. But also thankful you shared because this a good reminder as to why checking and weeding is so important. I manually pull weeds in my garden as well, and agree that regularly checking and pulling them is the best way to go.