Weeds

When I was a little girl, I used to make up games to help me clean my messy room. When I had children of my own, I taught my kids the same games and hoped that it would help them to have a clean room. Now my kids have kids, and I have a messy yard! One "game" I use to clean up the weeds is to concentrate on one type of weed and eradicate it, while ignoring the rest of the weeds, knowing that their turn will arrive soon. Which weed do I target? The one that is going to seed! I don't need to have them self-sow their seeds and make more work for me! Here you see the common dandelion in all of its glory--it's out of here today!!

This is a grass that has green seed-heads, so it will be next on my weed eradication list. This grass has seeded itself in several spots around my back yard. It is a tough grass to pull as the roots really hang on, but I'll get it out!
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I took care of these weeds! The grass above is actually hay. I use baled straw in my garden and it has some seeds, which have spouted in my yard. I ignored my yard for the last year and the hay has matured. I got to thinking about mulching, so I took scissors and cut the hay off, and laid it in my veggie boxes. Next, I hope to pick up some coffee grounds at Star Bucks, where I understand they bag up their grounds and give the stuff away for free.

Weeds--Annual Bluegrass

Annual bluegrass (Poa annua, a member of the grass family) starts out small, but can become quite a pest. It has more or less flattened stems that are spreading or erect. The stems are from 2" to 12" long, sometimes forming dense clumps. The leaves are bright green and thrives in lawns, gardens, cultivated crops, roadsides, and other open areas. It can be especially troublesome in lawns where it tends to grow faster than other grasses and once mature it dies, resulting in brown spots in the lawn.

Annual bluegrass is not considered an edible weed, unless you like to eat grass, I suppose! Hula hoe when it is small, dig it out when bigger, or some people would use a weed spray. If spraying, read the directions and use it carefully. It does product a lot of seeds.

Weeds---Common Mallow

Common mallow (Malva neglecta; of the mallow family) and is a relative of cotton, okra, and hibiscus. Mallow has stems that are generally low spreading, the branches erect from 2" to 20" long. Leaves are rounded with a heart-shaped base, 3/4" to 3 1/2" in diameter. Flower petals are from white to pale lavender. The seed pod looks like a round or wheel of cheese, which gives it a nickname of "cheeseweed" or "buttonweed."


This is another edible weed. Edible weeds can give us added variety to our meals, besides some nutrition. The little cheese wheels can be eaten raw. They don't have a whole lot of flavor, but have a slight resemblance to okra. The leaves can be harvested and cooked like spinach. Mallow leaves are high in calcium and iron, and freeze well. Boil the leaves until wilted, drain, and freeze in large zip lock bags for later use. They have a thickening effect when added to soup (also showing the okra relation). The flowers are also edible, although they don't add much flavor, they are great for appearance. Both the flowers and the cheeses would make any salad look interesting.

Weeds--Henbit

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule L., a member of the mint family) is an annual weed with spreading or weakly erect, square stems, and a much-branched base. Flowers are pink to purple and white, 1/2" to 3/4" long, and are borne in compact whorls in the axils of the upper leaves. The stems droop, turning upward, growing to as tall as 16 inches. Stems are square, green to purplish and can be smooth or hairy. Leaves are up to 1-inch long, dark green and hairy above, lighter below.

This is another edible weed, and it has no mint flavor. The tops of young plants can be used in salads or can be stir-fried as a spring vegetable. The flavor is best when the plant is in flower. The young shoots, leaves and flowers of this plant are edible and, once washed, can be simply cooked by adding to frying pan with a knob of butter some spring onions and plenty of seasoning.

Weeds--Almond, Pecan

This really isn't a weed, but it is in my yard (this one was at the Garden of the Sun). I have an almond tree and every fall the blue jays help harvest the nuts. They tuck the nuts all over the place (when we had a shake roof, the jays would push the nuts under a shingle, where it would sprout!) and usually in the ground somewhere. Then they sprout--all over the yard. Pecans are the same way. Although I don't have a pecan tree, someone in my neighborhood does. The almond whips are not too hard to pull out, but the pecans are. If you want to have nut trees, it would be best to buy them bare-root and plant them where you want them. Otherwise, you don't know how good of a nut tree you will have if you just let the birds plant them.

Weeds---Chickweed

I have too much to do this week, so I don't have a checklist for working in my yard. I did go out to the Garden of the Sun (the Master Gardener's demonstration garden) this morning and took care of a lot of weeds. As people look out at their snow-covered gardens they may laugh at us (in the Central Valley of California) because we have weeds coming up in our yards. But, we can laugh right back at them because we have such a long growing season! I took pictures of some of the common weeds that are starting to grow at the Garden of the Sun, and hope it will help you as you work in your own garden.

Common Chickweed (Stellaria media; which means little star, in the midst) is a member of the Pink family (Pinks are a type of flower, that includes Dianthus and Carnations). Plants can grow from 4" to 12" high and spread quite far.

Chickweed has a 1/4" white flower.

Chickweed is one common weed that we have in our yards every winter and spring. You may have to click on the picture to enlarge it, to see the little seedlings that are just sprouting. This is the best time to get rid of this weed--a hula hoe works really well, just make sure the ground is not too wet. That will eliminate later weed pulling. Chickweed is prolific, meaning it throws out a lot of seeds.

This shows what Chickweed looks like as it grows bigger. It has creeping stems that root at the leaf nodes, anytime a node touches the ground. When pulling these larger weeds, the stems often break, leaving the rooted nodes to grow a new plant.

Chickweed generally grows in shady or protected areas, and can get quite large. This spot of weeds will need to be carefully pulled out, getting all of the nodes that are left behind.

Chickweed is a sweet edible weed and can be eaten right in the garden, as a spinach substitute or in a salad. It is very high in copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, silicon and zinc. It is high in calcium, chlorophyll, phosphorus, potassium, protein, Vitamin A and fat. And it is a good source of Vitamin C, riboflavin, niacin, thiamine and plant sodium.

If you don't want chickweed around, then mulch is a great way to avoid this whole problem. If the mulch is thick enough, with no soil showing through, then the annual weed seeds cannot sprout as they need the sun to start growing.

Some Thoughts on Weeds

"Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons."
--Dave Barry

"But make no mistake: weeds will win: nature bats last."
--Robert M. Pyle

"The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over never weeded a garden." --Ray D. Everson

"Weeds Never Die."
--Danish Proverb

Garden Checklist

Today there is no "Garden Checklist" in the Fresno Bee.


"Lawn Burweed Spells Trouble for Pets"--by Elinor Teague (edited)

This picture shows how a burweed grows. It has insignificant flowers and each flower developes into a burr. These burs are quite sharp and stickery, and easily entangle themselves into pet fur. It is painful to walk on, even for the animals. This weed is fairly new to our area. The seeds sprout in the fall, late September and early October. The weeds stay fairly small and are semi-dormant through the winter. In February and March they start to grow rapidly. "The mature plants form a low-growing mat of small, finely-textured leaves, 3 to 4 inches high, that can spread to a foot or more in width." When temperatures go above 90', the weeds will die. The burrs themselves take a long time to decompose.

Treatment to prevent lawn burweed begins in the fall by applying pre-emergent. Burweed goes by many names, "spurweed, stickerweed, sandbur and sandspur", so check labels for these names or the botanical name, Soliva pterosperma. "Successful control for lawn burweed in turfgrasses may require several applications of a 'two-way or three-way' herbicide in the winter months. The herbicide should be formulated with a mixture of 2,4-D, MCPP and dicamba. These products will provide more effective control than 2,4-D alone."

ALWAYS, ALWAYS read the labels before using---know if children and pets need to keep their distance from any chemical applications.

Mulching The Veggies

This picture shows one end of my main box garden. I have Roma tomatoes, Contender Bush Beans (lighter green), Bountiful Esther Dry Beans (darker green), Amish Melon (hard to see, it's planted between the tomato rows), and Sumter Pickling Cucumbers (there is a trellis in the upper left corner of the picture; the plants are about 6" tall and hard to see, too). You can see the mulch around the tomatoes (there is straw around the beans). This mulch started out like the weeds in the picture below. With our hot days coming on it doesn't take long for the weeds to become a nice mulch once they are pulled and layed on the soil. It takes just a few days and the weed/mulch turns from green to brown.

This picture shows what I did last night. The crabgrass, plus a few nutsedges, was about 18" high, the soil was moist (not wet), and so I used my trusty knife to get the weeds pulled. This is a mixed bed of flowers and vegetables---I couldn't wait for my new raised garden boxes and I just planted vegetables everywhere earlier this spring! I pulled the weeds and layed them down on the ground. It is hot enough that the weeds wither in a day or two and won't re-grow. I worked until it was so dark that I couldn't see the weeds anymore. When I stopped to go in the house, I realized that my knife was nowhere to be found! I suppose it is under the weeds somewhere!! I will look for it later today or tomorrow, and hopefully I will find it!

I bought these strawberries and boysenberries this morning. Guess what I am doing this afternoon?!? I am making my Berry Good Jam. I just use the pectin recipe for strawberry jam, but substitute boysenberries for half of the strawberries. It has a wonderful flavor and is very easy to make! I didn't have enough of this jam to last me through last year, so I am making sure I have plenty this year!

True Confessions . . .

As you likely have noticed from pictures of my garden that I have posted, I do, indeed, have weeds in my yard. Is anyone's yard totally weed free? That's not likely unless they have a personal gardener or a yard maintenance crew. Yesterday the Fresno County Master Gardeners held their annual home garden tour. They feature five homes with different types of gardens, kind of something-for-everyone. You can take pictures, ask questions (MG are posted at each garden), and take away new ideas that you might incorporate into your own garden. To make these gardens look perfect takes many long man-hours, put in by a team in each garden, over the course of several weeks. They do a lot of WEEDING, pruning and planting to bring each yard up to perfection. With my yard, I have no personal gardener or yard maintenance crew. The last eight years I have been going to college (including several summers), which has taken all of my time. I was able to get out into my garden only a couple of times, literally, over the course of each semester. I would also work in my yard during the winter breaks, but spring (Easter) breaks were used to write reports. This spring I spent two weeks in Sandpoint, Idaho, visiting my parents, so seed-starting/planting was pushed back and the weeds got a foot-hold. I have been re-doing my "sewing" room, turning it into a food storage room. Everything has been removed so I could paint, and that "everything" sits in my living room, family room and dining room (what a mess!). So, you can see, my gardening has taken a back seat for some time. And, spring has gotten ahead of me! With our heatwave early this season, the weeds burst forth with a vengeance, especially the nut sedge (it's worse than Bermuda grass). I also, with the help of my husband, Dave, am trying to get a new vegetable garden in. This has taken several weeks as Dave is working on his Master's Degree through National Schools, so he has been intensively working on that the past four weeks. When the new boxes are in place and planted, I will be able to focus more on the rest of the yard. The front yard is nearly weed-free, and looks nice for the neighbors. My husband has also bought and planted numerous flowers in the front yard, because he "wants lots of color!" Now, I will focus more on the backyard, especially the veggie boxes, and get into a working routine.