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RSSGardeners' musings
Persistent weeds
Posted by: James Alexander-Sinclair, 26 February 2008, 10.54AM
I have never been good with tangles. Snaggled kite strings drive me dotty. Gordian knots of fishing line result in much swearing. Bricklaying lines that, if left alone for a couple of minutes, mysteriously tie themselves into intricate clove hitches. Garden twine where, if you open the cellophane package the wrong way then the loose end becomes strangely elusive. All of these things are certain to put me in a very bad mood.
Not so tangles of weeds; I rather enjoy the gradual teasing and tickling of bindweed or couch grass roots. It's like that scene in Bridge on the River Kwai when Alec Guinness finds the explosive fuse and traces it all the way through the mud to where charges are attached to the bridge. The secret is to carry on until you find the very last bit. Except that you never do...nobody ever does. There is always a particularly fertile chink that hides when it hears me coming and then sprouts back with a vengeance as soon as I turn my back.
Generally this is a good time to go after any perennial weeds; before the garden really gets going it is quite easy to track them down. Also the ground is soft enough to winkle out the clinging roots of buttercups or the long parsnipy tap roots of docks. The nicotine yellow roots of nettles are easy to trace, although the little leaves are vicious stingers.
The Grandes Dames of the weed world in my garden, however, are bindweed and couch grass (I thank all divine beings that we have no ground elder in this garden). The former, in addition to its spiralling growth habit, has fleshy white roots that reach out in every direction and can go many feet into the ground. All the topsoil in my garden (formerly a concrete covered farmyard) was imported so a little bit must have come in with it and has spread over the past decade. If you have a severe outbreak then, later in the year when the leaves appear, it would be sensible to use a glyphosate weedkiller otherwise the digging may become soul destroying (to avoid killing neighbouring plants then try stuffing the plant into a polythene bag and spraying it inside the bag).
Couch grass (sometimes known as twitch) has also appeared from somewhere and is colonising a couple of beds. It has long bony looking runners with amazingly sharp points that can easily push their way through even the heaviest soils. They get themselves in amongst the roots of other plants - the solution then is to dig up the whole plant and wash all the soil off until you can clearly see which roots are good and which are evil.
I'm sure that I am not alone in enjoying some jobs that many people find really fiddly and maddeningly annoying.
Comments
Helen, Malvern
26 February 2008, 01.22PM
Simon
27 February 2008, 09.25AM
Ria - Dorset
28 February 2008, 08.45PM
laurel
01 March 2007, 02.47PM
Jonesjustme9
01 March 2008, 11.25PM
Joanna Day
15 March 2008, 12.18AM
Jacqui Senior
28 March 2008, 05.08PM
catking
25 April 2008, 12.32AM
James A-S - reply to Cat King
28 April 2008, 05.30PM
barton
09 May 2008, 04.42PM
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