Winter Weeding

This has nothing to do with winter weeding but I thought it would grab your attention. Featured plants are Hydrangea Paniculata Grandiflora, purple perilla and yellow mirabilis, four o’clocks. Now that your attention has been grabbed…..

Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule, shown here with a Redbor kale seedling. When we first moved here and these little seedlings, the henbit, not the kale, appeared in the winter, I happily thought some of my flowers had seeded themselves. They were similar in appearance to the catnip that also shows itself then. It was not until the flowers bloomed, purple dots on spikes, that I remembered it as a plant from my youth. Ubiquitous and mildly attractive. Okay, it is giving green healthy foliage at a time when green is a scarcity. Let it be. The problem began when it grew larger and larger, preventing the desirable volunteer babies from getting sun and nutrients.

Out it came, but the seeds had already been sown. When a new area is cleared and hoed, the henbit returns by the hundreds. It is quickly pulled up now and I now feel sort of in control, for the time being.

lookalike catnip

Wild onions Allium ?

A true gardener’ bane. These put forth new growth in winter. They break off when pulled and make baby bulblets as well as seed if allowed to flower.

These are amazingly offered in bulb catalogs as Allium ‘Hair’. Shown here with its friend, henbit.

Sprays don’t affect it and digging up groups doesn’t seem to eradicate it. There must always be left in the ground some little tiny piece that will grow quickly into the noxious adult onion. This has grown right through landscape cloth, piercing it with the grass like foliage. When you attempt to dig or pull the offender, the bulbs are safely under the cloth, impervious to your efforts. This may be a battle that cannot be won.

This little weed has white flowers in spring on spikes. Can anyone help identify it?Added: This is hairy, or it might be bitter cress, Cardamine hirsuta.

Another shot of this weed’s winter look, with sedum and a foxglove seedling joining it between the pavers.
It is in the garden by the hundreds.

Wild Strawberry

It has pretty three part leaves, white flowers and tiny red inedible fruit. It spreads by runners and stays low, less than six inches in height. This is hardly a terrible weed, but it does smother the yellow creeping jenny, lysimachia nummularia, that is the ground cover desired around the pond slope. The jenny is brilliantly golden yellow in the spring, then settles into a more subtle hue through fall.

Before the envasion of the wild strawberry, a sea of gold in spring.

That is the trouble with all these winter weeds. They have a beauty of their own and are fine unless you are trying to grow something else. They are little piggies then.

Frances

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