Weeds Ideas, Tips & Guides

5 Ways to Get Rid of Weeds Without Pulling Them Are you tired of hand-pulling weeds? Try these different techniques you may or may not have heard of for controlling weeds in your garden. Try these five methods to get rid of weeds without hand-pulling!

Common Burdock Learn how to identify and control common burdock weed. Common burdock (Arctium minus) What does common burdock look like?

In times past, blackberries were deliberately used as hedging plants, and their prickles make them a very good intruder deterrent if you have an open boundary. They have also been used in herbal medicine. Chewing blackberry leaves was said to soothe a toothache, and frozen blackberries are great for soothing a sore throat or a tickly cough.

The stinging nettle Urtica dioica is one of the easiest plants to identify – a quick brush past it and you’ll certainly know that you’ve found one! This tough perennial that can reproduce by seeds and by spreading roots is hard to eradicate from the garden, but in times past its virtues were far more valued than they are today.

The allotment is having to take care of itself for a while, as I’m concentrating on finishing my dissertation. It’s going down nature’s preferred route for taking care of unused soil, and covering itself in weeds. Come September I’m going to have my work cut out getting them under control….

The new grapevines I ordered (from Victoriana Nursery Gardens) arrived last week. The planters for them should arrive this week…. I want the vines to grow over the arbour, and we’ve chosen a pair of wooden planters that can be fixed to the arbour, so that the whole lot can be moved together should the need ever arise. The vines are going to be long-term residents of the garden, after all. It won’t be too long before I can enjoy cooking with vine leaves, although a decent crop of seedless dessert grapes might take a little longer.

I love books about weeds and wild plants – they generally contains little gems of fascinating information about useful and edible plants, tidbits you don’t find in gardening manuals. It’s been a while since I had the chance to sit down and peruse a good book, so it was great to be offered a review copy of Wonderful Weeds by Madeleine Harley, which has the subtitle “an extensive and fully illustrated guide from seedlings to fruit.”

There are plenty of signs of new life in the garden at the moment, with bulbs pushing up and buds fattening up. And the surface of the compost in my containers is turning green. This precocious leafy growth is courtesy of hairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, a small and speedy weed that’s pretty much everywhere.

Last year I ordered myself a packet of the Organic Gardening Catalogue’s wild edible plant mix. It says it contains:

My in-laws visited yesterday to share a cup of tea and a homemade muffin in the garden. My father-in-law asked me what my philosophy on weeding was, as he “knows I won’t spray them.” But he wasn’t really interested, he was just saying that he thought my garden was weedy and he didn’t approve. It’s the second time he has made a similar comment this year.

Aimee Brett, Nottingham Trent University

So like everyone else you have weeds you want to ‘get rid of’ and here is how.

When is a weed not a weed? Well not very often if it is growing in the wrong place. If you have planted Persicaria then that is Knot a weed it is a notweed or not depending on your spelling.

Ulex europaeus better known as Gorse, furze, furse or whin is a very prickly shrub of the pea family. Western gorse Ulex gallii is frequent in the western side of Britain and is relatively low growing yet robust. Dwarf gorse or Ulex minor is a low growing, sprawling shrub.

Will the EU ban the garden use of glyphosphate the best chemical cure for Couch grass?

Many common weeds found in lawns and grass are appealing wild flowers. They look best in a meadow setting and not in a manicured lawn.

One weed that some gardeners wish they were able to grow – well then can but not always legally.

Unfortunately, my lawn has a lot of moss (if you look closely) this is because I’ve gone for the ‘wildlife effect’ i.e. too lazy to mow the lawn.

Dandelion – Weed or Plant of beauty?

A sea of Dandelions

Bellis or Daisy is recognised by it’s flat rosettes of oval leaves and small white yellow eyed flowers. They tend to form colonies that hug the ground to smother out nearby grass. From the boots of the ‘My old mans a dustman’ song, ‘it takes such a job to pull them up that he calls them daisy roots’ the best treatment is a selective weed killer that may need a couple of applications. Alternatively each root can be dug out by hand.

Comfrey juice concentrate or nettle juice stink but Seaweed extract is a weed to feed your garden. In fact seaweed is arguably the best weed in your garden.

What is the collective noun for a group of dandelions?   A drift or adrift in my garden!

I bet you spotted my weed as soon as you looked at the picture. ‘Where’s Wally’ you may ask, well he is the gardener that not only let the dandelion flower but seed as well. Back to gardening school. Depending how you look at it there has been a great profusion of dandelions this year but you just wait until next year. The ‘clocks’ have been distributed far and wide since the beginning of May, the breezes were light, the conditions just right and the air and ponds filled with seeds so dandelions are not going to be a threatened species anytime soon!

Yorkshire has suffered an exceptionally wet autumn culminating in disastrous floods at Fishlake and around the river Don. One plant that will thrive in these wet northerly conditions is our old friend Moss.  As this has been covered before I am just using this post to link you to other observations and tips about moss.

I am not a great fan of ferns as I live too near moorland that shares its bounty with gay abandon and I spend significant time removing uninvited guests. These are usually Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) or  Buckler-fern (Dryopteris dilatata) with fronds that are arranged like a shuttlecock. There are some exceptions such as the Hart’s tongue (Asplenium scolopendrium) and the  Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes) shown in this wall. The strap like fronds  and pinnate rectangular leaflet fronds make a simple  feature on this mossy wall.

Andy is nursery manager of Broken Arrow in Hamden CT, a destination nursery with an extensive retail operation plus a giant mail-order catalog of unusual things. His 25-year-old personal Epimedium collection includes more than 150 kinds, with other shade treasures such as Solomon’s seal, or Polygonatum, and some lookalikes also on his radar.Broken Arrow, where he has worked for 25 years, is known for unusual things: “Especially if it’s variegated, dwarf, or has contorted branches, or there’s something that’s not quite looking right about the plant”–in the very best way, of course–Andy says you’ll find it there. Plants with an irresistible twist

DO YOU THINK I BELIEVE THIS FOR ONE SECOND? After nearly 30 years of fighting (losing?) the good fight, I know the one thing we can count on is that garlic mustard will outlive us. Thanks to Andre for another great doodle. If you need more than a laugh to cope with your weeds, try these stories:

Y ES, THEY CAN MAKE YOU FEEL VIOLENT, author Teri Dunn Chace admits about weeds in “How to Eradicate Invasive Plants.” In fact, if authors named their own books, this new one might have been called, “The War of the Weeds.” But in that “two wrongs don’t make a right” way of thinking, Teri reminds us that getting out the big guns isn’t where to begin. Understanding who you’re up against, and being strategic, is.

No matter what weed you are facing, if it’s flowering or setting seed now, be sure to behead it: mow it down, harvest the blooms for bouquets, or otherwise prevent a successful sexual reproduction cycle.teri dunn chace’s basic weed strategyFIRST A FAST REVIEW of Teri’s basic strategic weed-fighting plan, since simply pinpointing specific things this time of year isn’t the whole story.  Her plan, she admits: mostly practical and straight-forward.“Although it’s common sense, it’s things we sometimes don’t do,” says Teri, “but if we did it would make a big difference.” Don’t let things get to where you want to turn to the store to buy some chemical to erase your weed woes. Follow her

One of the best resources ever for those wishing to know their weeds is the book “Weeds of North America,” published in 2014 by University of Chicago Press, and co-authored by Richard Dickinson, with France Royer. Since its release, it is always at the ready here—with information about 500 species, plus photos of most every one at every life phase from seed to seedling to full plant and leaf and flower detail. There will be no mistaking weed from wildflower or garden plant again. Toronto-based Richard Dickinson has taught plant taxonomy for more than 25 years, and he joined me to talk about every gardener’s favorite—or is it unfavorite?—subject, weeds. I learned how they get so good at being weedy, and what their environmental impact is beyond taking space awa

IT’S PRETTY ENOUGH, and nice in arrangements, but all I really want to say about gooseneck loosestrife is: Why won’t this plant die? It’s another of the “confidence booster” (read: so easy as to be thuggish) perennials I started out with naively 20-something years ago here, and can’t get rid of. Add Lysimachia clethroides (above) to the list with chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) and comfrey and and and and … the depressing list of easy perennials weeds I planted, and will never be rid of.

I’m a longtime organic gardener, meaning no lover of chemical “answers” to problems, but I’m also no lover of the endless and often-wacky home remedies that I read about year after year.Some home remedies do work, but some are not just ineffective, but also dangerous, sometimes as dangerous as chemicals.I was interested to read an open letter in summer 2015 to “Consumer Reports” written by Jeff, a former Associate Professor of Horticultural Science at University of Minnesota, who has a masters in entomology and PhD in horticulture, plus 20 years of practical and research experience with plants. He’s the author of “The Truth About

You know me: I like to know my weeds—rather than just have a fit about some infestation or other, to actually find out what they are, and where they are native to, and what their role for better or worse is in the bigger picture is (other than to irritate me).I don’t know which liverwort I have, but it is what’s called a thallose species—made up of flattened tissue that looks almost rubbery to me. You might think at first they were some kind of moss or algae, and in fact like those other Bryophytes the liverworts have no vascular system, and they repro

Have you been fascinated with canary blooms growing around in your garden and unsure what the plants are? Have a look at some of the best Weeds with Yellow Flowers that can help you learn more!

Do you know that many tasty and healthy edible plants can be found among the common weeds? Wild Edible Weeds can turn an ordinary cuisine into an exquisite dish. They also have many medicinal properties! Let’s have a look at them!