Making Weeding Easier

Most of the weeds in the garden are seedlings from the "soil seed bank". Seeds dropped by plants that have matured there in the past. I am still pulling moss rose seedlings out of a bed in the front yard where there have been no moss rose planted in the four years I have lived in this house! If you recognize the seedlings you can have many flowers from "weeds" that way. I have let volunteer violas, snapdragons, alyssum and verbena "Imagination" bloom at various spots this year from seed dropped in earlier seasons. We have no elms in our yard, but the two houses on either side have one each. The summer conditions have been just right for germination of the massive seed crop that fell into the flower beds and in the grass this year. The grass gets mowed, no problem, but the beds are one heck of a chore! When the seedlings were very young and hadn't developed more than one set of true leaves, I could clear some areas with a hand tool I have that looks like part of a disk with an attached handle. the flat edge of the tool, the part that would be called the diameter if it were a half circle (it's not) is sharpened like a knife blade. It is designed to be pulled toward you to slice off the seedlings just below the surface. It works well in open places between plants and saves time. I still have to pull by hand those that grow among the ground covers or in other areas that are restricted by the surrounding delicate stems of my annuals and perennials. Where this is the case, I wait until my next time around when the weeds will be taller and can be more easily grasped.

Some weeds seem to be the bane of the gardener's existence. They are perennial, grow from running rhizomes and seed freely if allowed to do so. In my yard, that weed-from-hell is the lovely Campanula rapunculoides, or running bell flower. In Minneapolis it is called alley bell flower because it comes up in the alleys, vacant lots, cracks in the sidewalk etc. In waste places, I think of it as a wonderful thing. In my garden, it causes me to lose my temper. Its rhizomes spread everywhere, and if I let it bloom and don't promptly deadhead, it seeds everywhere else. It

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