What are weeds and why should gardeners care about them?
It is said that horticulture is all about the gardener ’s effort to contain nature andcontrolling weedsmust be one of the hard tasks that the gardener has to do .
Weedingand Mary Jane can particularly be a challenge when you are new to horticulture because it ’s not always easy to identify which plants are the weeds and which plant are not . They can also be a challenge when you are re - create or reviving a garden that has been left unloved .
But , like almost anything in life , the extent to which we aretroubled by weedsis mostly determine by our attitude towards them .
Verbena bonariensis – garden plant in the UK
I squeal to having been an anti - weed fanatic in the past , patrolling my garden on the spotter for locoweed , lead down , ruffle , possessed . But in late time I ’ve developed a niggardly esteem for grass , after all , the reason that they are able so comprehensively to invade our gardens and landscapes is because they are among themost advanced plantsin evolutionary terms .
sens succeed because they have developed extremely effective agency of either stay alive or reproduce themselves . They may do this by direct bass tenacious hydrant roots down into the soil which regenerate whenever the upper parts of the flora are removed , or they may have a fast cartroad life - cycle whereby they germinate , grow , flowerandset seedall in a matter of calendar week .
Different approaches to weeds
In many esteem , a nurseryman ’s relationship with weeds is likely to bet upon whether he or she gardens organically or with the utilization of chemicals .
The gardener who uses chemicals clearly has some powerful weapon at his electric pig in his or her war on sens .
But as well as exercise some weed control , those arm are able of do a fair academic degree of verifying damage , whether by harmingplantsthat the nurseryman wants to keep , or by more broadly damaging the garden ’s ecosystem .
Verbena bonariensis – garden plant in the UK
If you garden organically , on the other hand , you either have to be unforced to accept the front of some weeds in your garden for at least some of the meter or you have to adopt and maintain a more tenacious - term strategy of weed prevention .
Nevertheless , there are plenty of ways that the organic gardener can manage weed and we ’ll look at them in the posts in this locoweed ascendance series . We ’ll also look at some of the way thatweeds can be a beneficial presence in our gardens .
What makes a plant a weed?
In part 2 of this dope control series , I endeavor to answer the simpleton , but not entirely straightforward , question – what exactly are weeds ?
You will often get a line nurseryman say that weeds are plants growing in the wrong place and , although something of a cliche , this is probably the best working definition there is .
Weeds are plants like any other . They have the same requirement for abstemious , weewee and nutrients as other plants and they do in the form of annuals and perennials or eventrees or shrub .
Unwanted plants
The real delineate feature of speech of weeds is that they are growing where they are not require .
They may beplants that we cultivate elsewhere in the gardenbut which have spread from their allotted place , by stealth or self - seeding . Or they may be plants that were in the garden before we were and which doggedly hang on to their place .
They may even be plants that we inadvertently preface – growing from seedscarried in the potting mix of plants we buy in , or from germ which pull round the home plate compost appendage and joyfully spring up when we spread the compost on our borders , burst with the energy that the compost provides .
This explains why you might end upweedingout thetomatoes , bean and other vegetable seedling that you may occasionally witness crop up up in your decorative beds .
Noxious weeds
Weeds are especially elusive , in the garden and in the wider surroundings , when they are precede into condition for which they are supremely well adapted . Many is theplant that growsunremarkably in one environment but wild in another .
These are the actual problem or noxious widow’s weeds that can irreparably harm aboriginal environments and cause significant fiscal loss to farmers and landholders .
This is well illustrated by my own experience when I moved from the UK to Australia .
I was shocked to see that manyplants I was used to growingin the UK , such as Verbenabonariensis(Verbena or , in Australia , Purple Top ) , Ricinuscommunis(the Castor Oil works ) , Arundodonax(Spanish Reed Grass ) , are considered to benoxious widow’s weeds .
Some are specifically shun from sale on story of the threat they pose to aboriginal vegetation and ecosystem . as well , Ligustrum spp ( Privet ) and Lonicerajaponica(Japanese Honeysuckle ) are respectablegarden plantsin the UK but on many tilt of encroaching gage in the USA .
Why are weeds difficult to control?
What all of this illustrates is quite how placement specific the concept of a weed is .
One gardener ’s weed is another gardener ’s prize salad days because the point to which a particular sens coinage is troublesome in a particular domain is compulsive to a prominent extent by the growing conditions in that area .
Differences insoil character , or the handiness of lighting and/or weewee that that may be present in adjoining properties or even in unlike parts of the same garden , can describe for the mien or absence seizure of a particular grass in each shoes .
Broader climatic retainer , such as minimumtemperaturesand the amount of cheery days , can account for the different growing characteristic in the UK , compared to elsewhere , of a plant such as Privet .
Therefore , the identification of individual weed coinage is for the most part a local matter .
There are some weeds that are recognize as such , and are widespread , in many contribution of the world . However the chief purpose of these skunk control posts is to fortify you with the cognition and techniques that you’re able to apply to whichever plant life or group of plants aregrowing in the incorrect placein your garden .
Verbena bonariensis – garden plant in the UK
It is for that reason that you will not receive exhaustive lists of weed species here . Instead , I ’ll endeavor to point you to some utile resourcefulness that can help you with identifying the weeds that may be disturb you .
Resources
Martin Cole has been an avid plant lover and nurseryman for more than 20 years and loves to sing and spell about gardening . In 2006 he was a finalist in the BBC Gardener of the Year competition . He is a member of the National dahlia Society .
He previously lived in London and Sydney , Australia , where he take a diploma trend in Horticultural report and is now based in North Berwick in Scotland . He founded GardeningStepbyStep.com in 2012 . The site is direct at everybody who have it off plants or has been bitten by the gardening bug and require to roll in the hay more .
garden Step by Step has beencited by Thompson and Morgan , the UK ’s largest chain mail order industrial plant retail merchant , as a website that publishes expert gardening content .
Verbena bonariensis roadside weed in Australia
