Home Gardener: Weeds That Need to Be Gone!

Most people think that weeds are just waking up and are not really an issue yet in their yards. But to be honest, some nasty acting weeds are very active right now. Weeds are not a fun subject, but I felt we should address it so you can get to work while they are small and easily removed. Here are a few that bug me....

Of course there is dandelion, the scourge of modern lawn care. I find that I have to use a long pointy tool to slice the tap root and leaf top off below the soil surface. That usually does the trick. Dandelions generally bloom the second year, although I think some small plants in spring grow large enough to bloom in the fall of the same year. You can get your kids to dig them out or just go at it until you have eradicated the nasty varmint weeds.... Some people make wine out of the yellow blossoms, before they reach the seed puff stage. I make hot salad using them, but generally I buy them pre-cleaned at the store! So dig away and compost the weed plants in your bin.

Bittercress—even the name sounds nasty. It is a small-leaved pervasive weed that is blooming right now. Look for tiny, tiny white flowers on a green rosette-stemmed, low-to-the-ground plant. It's easy to pull (thank goodness), but sadly it is everywhere these days. I swear I never saw it until the last 6-7 years. According to the PA State Turfgrass webpage, it is a winter or summer annual or even biennial. It seems excessively versatile! It produces hordes of horrid seeds in inch long skinny dry pods that shoot seeds all over the place if you disturb the plant. These tiny muskets shoot out bittercress seeds, aiding its evil and speedy propagation throughout our fair town. Plus, I find that the seeds are very irritating to my skin and they can be painful if one shoots in your eye. I have seen some huge patches of it in a neighbor’s tree belt. This is my least favorite weed in the yard. So, now is the time to yank them out before the seeds mature. Or get that mower and shear them off ASAP if they are in the lawn. If you let it go to seed now it will go through several more generations of plants and seeds just in this year of 2013. So yank, yank, yank!

I have a weed masquerading as a tasty fruit. The wild ornamental strawberry is spreading in my yard. Even this early, it is growing fast. It has smaller leaves than true strawberry plants, but looks a lot like one. Kids always want to eat the fruit. Unfortunately, the fruits are tiny, extremely seedy and totally tasteless. It's nothing you want to have around so pull the rosettes out before they can spread this summer.

Another weed is the purple deadnettle. It is about 5-6 inches tall, with small heart-shaped leaves on one stem. The lavender flowers are near the top and they are teeny-tiny trumpets—10 or more per stem. It is actually fairly attractive but definitely invasive, and not to be allowed to propagate as deadnettles crowd out other real garden flowers.

Common groundsel is blooming right now. It has small, ugly yellowish flowers on a prickly looking short plant. Yank!

Lastly I want to mention the wide variety of weed grasses that invade flower beds. Generally you need to dig every bit of the stringy roots out of the flower/veggie beds. Any bit left behind will grow into a clump of coarse grass that saps soil nutrition and water from your wanted plants. So don’t yank, dig.... And now is a great time to dig them, before they get settled in for the summer and become extra hard to pull out. Again, dig them with a spading fork so you get every strand of roots. Leave no grass root behind!

So, weeds grow in the garden and in the lawn. Clover is considered by some to be a weed. But, clover actually fixes nitrogen into the soil from the air, which is a very helpful thing. In decades past white clover seed was part of many lawn grass mixes. So clovers are helpful even if you snip off their flower heads with the lawn mower. Then there are wild violets that grow in my lawn and I enjoy their blooms and even their heart shaped leaves. They are staying. So, a weed can be a worthy flower in the eyes of a loving gardener!

There are many other pesky weeds in Pennsylvania. If you are interested, there are a number of websites with weed information, including pictures. It can be a worthwhile effort to identify that bothersome weed taking hold in the garden. Just remember, weeds that go to seed are going to be even more of a problem in the future, so get rid of them now! If you put them in your compost pile they need to be fully composted or the seeds—if mature—may sprout when you spread the compost. Now go weed!