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Weeds, Be Gone!

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted, including any photos, by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

Is your garden weed-free? That's an interesting question and depends on how you care to define what constitutes a weed. Some people equate "any plant out of place" with weed status. That's not a bad definition although it seems a bit broad. To be fair, some of my favorite plants are self sown and not necessarily exactly where I would have planted them!

In my garden, I worry more about the typical everyday accepted weeds, the kind that spring up every year and may be either a pest or nuisance or worse. I put nutsedge in the "or worse" group. You may have a few pet peeves of your own in the weed department, every garden seems to have one or two irrepressibles.

It pays to check around if you are trying to identify a new weed you've found, especially if you are wondering if the weed is really a weed or a seedling from a favorite perennial that you'd just as soon keep and let develop. Of course, it also helps to know the enemy!

Below are some links to weed albums, mug shots and portraits, if you will. I have found them all useful at one time or another. For instance, I don't live in Michigan, but I have had nearly all of the "Michigan Weeds", both grassy and non-grassy, growing in my garden at one time or another.

"Eek! How can that be?"

You may well ask! Even though I try to keep weeds from going to seed, even though I pull the ones I do find as soon as I can, even though I mulch, and even though I plant my cultivated plants close together to leave as little space as possible for the interloping opportunists, my garden has weeds.

I garden in the country, ergo there are weeds. In a rural garden, the weed seeds blow in. The weeds flock to my yard from all the nearby woods, farm fields, abandoned fields, and roadsides. The weeds hitchhike in on wildlife, accompany purchased plants, infest the rootballs of gift plants from friends and neighbors and, I suspect, hop off of passing-by Winnebago campers in the middle of the night and make a bee-line to my garden. And if you live in town and have weeds, well, it's your own fault. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

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