Scrapbook image

Your scrapbook

Forgotten your details?

Enter your email address and we'll send your username and password to you

London

  • Partly CloudyToday
    9°C/17°C
  • CloudyTomorrow
    7°C/15°C
  • See Gardeners'
    7-day forecast

Our Gardeners' 7-day forecast warns you of changing weather conditions (including frost, high wind and drought) and suggests actions to take to protect your plants.

Advertisement

Problem solving

Fat hen

Symptoms

Fat hen is a weed that will quickly spread and colonise any open ground, competing with your other plants for nutrients.

Find it on: all over the garden

Time to act: late-spring to autumn

Fat hen

Fat hen, Chenopodium album, is an annual weed loved by butterflies, and whose young leaves are delicious in salads or cooked like spinach. However, it will also quickly colonise open ground and spread through your garden if left unchecked - a single plant can produce 20,000 seeds in its short lifetime.

Solution

Organic

Hand weed or hoe out seedlings as they appear, or smother them with a good layer of compost or mulch. Try to remove plants before they flower and seed to slow its spread.

Chemical

Use a total weedkiller, such as glyphosate. Avoid spraying on a windy day and near other desirable plants.

 

Subscribe to the magazine

May edition of Gardeners' World Magazine

In May...
The May issue is on sale from 29 April. Subscribe today and receive the next three issues of Gardeners' World magazine for just £1.

The UK's number 1 gardening magazine

Our show

BBC Gardener's World Live

Gardeners' World Live, 11-15 June 2008

See details

TV & Radio

Television icon

What's on this week

Find out what gardening programmes are on TV and radio this week. And read more about the Gardeners' World programme.

Offer

Planter

Buy a Felco pruning set for just £44.99

BBC Magazines

© BBC Magazines Ltd. BBC Worldwide Ltd.

The BBC Gardeners' World Magazine word mark and logo are trademarks of BBC Worldwide Ltd.

BBC Magazines is owned by the BBC and our profits are returned to the BBC for the benefit of the licence-fee payer.