Into the Weeds

In the early days of the spring gardening season, it’s “go go go” all the time: starting seeds in trays, moving them to small pots, preparing beds, planting out seeds in their new homes, and the occasional mad dash to start seeds you’d forgotten about. Eventually you can step back, admire the newly-planted annuals, perennials, and vegetables, and watch them grow.

But wait: not so fast. Before you know it, you will wake up to find your once beautiful beds overrun with weeds. The summer solstice is a good time for some major mid-season tidying.

Plant or Weed? 

The secret to gardening as a couple is capitalizing on each person’s strengths. I enjoy making order out of chaos, so I usually take the lead when it comes to cleaning up the garden. But I have occasionally been over-zealous, mistaking perfectly healthy plants for weeds. Like the time I accidentally removed an entire peony: [insert awkward conversation with spouse here]. I’ve learned my lesson. Before diving enthusiastically into any weeding exercise, we have a preliminary walk-through to make sure I know which plants are the keepers. 

If a bed is especially overrun, focusing on just one type of weed can help. Sure, it requires multiple passes over the same space, but it also makes it less likely I’ll grab a fistful of some emerging annual mixed in with the weeds. I recently used this method to tackle beds flanking a side entrance to the house. Garlic Mustard came first. This nasty invasive requires a concerted effort to make sure you remove the taproot, and then it must be bagged and disposed of like household rubbish. Next I removed the Japanese Stiltgrass, another invasive that had run amok in the beds and paths. 

Once those two were dealt with, I stepped back to assess the situation. There are a variety of plants in these beds—roses, dahlias, rudbeckia, verbena, and salvia—all planted every which way, with the goal of creating a cottage garden look. Most were not in bloom yet, so I found myself eyeing several tall leafy green plants I didn’t recognize. Chris was off doing some labor-intensive task and I feared being pressed into service. I could have stopped there and saved our “plant or weed?” discussion for another time. Then I remembered the Seek app from iNaturalist. While it performs best with blooming plants, on this occasion it helped confirm species like fireweed and horseweed, which I confidently removed from the scene.

It's difficult to tell the difference between common weeds and rudbeckia ...

The end result was a tidier bed, and space for several achillea from our earlier seed-starting bonanza.

Success Breeds Success

Brimming with confidence, I moved on to the second-most-weedy area, beneath a row of apple trees. The “plant or weed?” discussion was easier here, because we’d planted all of the ornamentals in a band adjacent to the trees, not beneath them. This also meant we could be more aggressive. So we tackled this job as a team, and made short work of it. Chris used a hoe to loosen most of the weeds, we raked them up, and then went after what was left. Now if we can just put down some mulch or leaf mould before the weeds return … but wait, I see another weedy bed in need of attention! Bye for now!

Apple trees, before and after