Don’t let your weeds seed – wildlife and wind will do the job of importing weeds anyway.

I am suffering this year from a pernicious weed called ‘Avens’ part of the Geum family. It comes in two sorts the yellow flowered Wood Avens  Geum urbanum and the pinker flowered  Water Avens Geum Rivale. They seed freely and there-in lies the problem as individually they are innocuous but when they spread around they become a pest.

Weed Control Tips

• Do not let weeds run to seed and disperse or you will have them for years.
• Do not put seed heads in the compost bin, if the heat fails to kill them you will end up spreading them around far better than mother nature can do.
• Hoe the soil as young annual weeds emerge. Good housekeeping will keep the number of weeds down.
• Remove the root of weeds to stop them re-emerging. Avens are shallow rooted but the stalks will just break off so you need to loosen the soil and pull out the roots.
• Think of any plant in the wrong place as a potential weed and remove or kill the flowering thugs amongst your plants. ( Forget-me-nots and some Poppies are a weed in my garden.)
• Beware imports of exoitic plants that become weeds. Water Avens is an escapee from pond plant situations
• Do not chop up the roots of pernicious weeds that can root again from just a root fragment. EG Ground Elder, Bindweeds Nettle or Couch Grass.
• Hand weed and remove the tap root of Dandelions and Docks.
• Some common annual weeds to look out for include;Chickweed, Groundsel Senecio vulgaris, Bittercress Cardamine flexuosa Shepherd’s purse and Fat Hen Chenopodium album.
• Grass seeds freely and can be a nasty weed getting close to the roots of your favourite plants.
• If all else fails use a selective weed killer but they will also select your good plants.   I spot weed when I must with a Glyphosphate base.

Wood Avens near a path showing the seed bur ready to be transfered to a different part of the garden – out it should come PDQ.