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Garden of Weedin'

© Barbara M. Martin

"WEEDING IS BAD FOR YOU!" Yup, you heard it here first.

But sure enough, it's that time again - time to pull weeds. Time to pull weeds some more. Time to go back and pull them again. Maybe this year it's time to get serious about the war on weeds.

You do have some options. This is nearly the millenium, after all. Time to think about a new start and yet, somehow some things never seem to change. Like weeds.

But first things first. There is the old standby, and yes it's labor intensive, low tech and old fashioned, but sometimes it's effective. You can pull weeds by hand being careful to take the entire root system as you go. This works best when the soil is moist and/or is soft and fluffy or sandy.

Now some weeds like mustard will pull nicely, but others, especially mature perennial weeds with taproots, are quite impossible to pull cleanly. Dandelions and pokeweed come to mind here, right along with the blisters to prove it!

And some weeds, like goldenrod and the dreaded mints, simply tear apart leaving myriad bits in the ground from which to rejuvenate in multiples even faster than you can pull or dig! Pulling these is counterproductive in my opinion.

And yet other weeds are not amenable to pulling for other reasons - thistles will stick you and poison ivy will, well, poison you. For these you may have to turn to tools -- diggers and grubbers and mattocks and such, all intended to wrench the weed from the soil. Easier, I think, to perhaps borrow the neighbor's goat to tie out in the affected area so as to allow the creature to munch them into oblivion.

So apart from pulling or grubbing or otherwise physically removing the weeds, what can you do? First off, don't let them go to seed if you can help it. That is rule number one. Rule number two is to use mulch; it helps so the seeds that do blow in can't germinate and to smother any little ones popping up.

Next, remember that even the most persistent of weeds will eventually use up their resources, get tired and give up in the face of constant attack (although I have my doubts about the truly pernicious such as bindweed, nutsedge and Bishop's Weed. Not to mention this unspeakable thug.) So there is hope, although prayer or invocation might help, too.

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