I did not intend to write a blog about weeds. Weeds, while one of my favorite TV shows, are not what I had in mind when I got into gardening. Alas, I am under attack. Here's the current round up (ha ha! Pun intended!):
1) Chickweed - at bay. It was 70 degrees and sunny a few weekends ago and I busted out the big gun - Monsanto's finest - and took care of all of it. For now. My hope is that two or fewer additional applications of this over the course of the summer will keep the chickweed level "weedable" for many years to come. And hopefully I can switch back to vinegar after this bottle is gone. So far, so good.
2) Blackberries - menacing. A couple of months ago I saw bright green leaves growing proudly out of the dead brown winter that was my yard. Like an alien to the mothership (I'm reading my first sci-fi novel, what can I say?) I walked to the yard only to find LARGE THORNS and a JAGGED STEM that could only be exotic blackberry. I did my best to yank it out. Lately I've seen a lot of berry plants popping out of the soil but I can't tell if they're raspberries (controllable) or blackberries (scary).
3) Morning Glory - code red! I had MG in my raspberry corral last summer which didn't bother me until I tasted my first raspberry (AMAZING) and realized that that MG was choking the life out of the raspberry stalks. Daunted by the prickly raspberries and general weediness of the corral, i just pulled the MG from the stems, not the roots. Clearly this wasn't going to solve my problem, and it caused great distruction to the raspberries. Last week I decided to go in, to take the bull by the horns, er, the MG by the roots. I got some good ones, 2' long roots and all, but suspect there's still a lot under there. I need to teach neighbor cat how to dig for morning glory.
