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My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Posted by phlip Taranaki NZ (My Page) on Mon, Nov 18, 02 at 19:45
| Hi there, I am one of the many gardeners who loves weeding.... I also love invasive weeds!! My favourites are convulvulus (bindweed), wandering willy (tradescantia spp), oxalis - oh those bulblets.....
You may be thinking 'this woman is odd!' - in NZ in winter I dig up the roots of convulvulus and take great glee in pulling great long strands of them out (bearing in mind each bit I leave behind will form a new plant - aaaaggghh)... I love a challenge and get great pleasure out of these weeds.
Do any of you feel the same?? Philippa |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I get a big kick out of pulling up those bindweed roots, myself. However, most of the time they just break off and there is so much of it at my house. If you get yours eradicated, please come visit me for awhile! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Oooh, yes, I love weeding and my very favorite (no "u") is peppermint. Pull on one plant and soon the whole garden is coming unravelled like pulling yarn on a sweater. Makes me feel virtuous, industrious and strong and the smell is wonderful! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Kind of like popping bubble wrap...you guys are too funny. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Don't forget those wonderful Dandelions! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| No seemyflowers, musn't get rid of the dandies here... Bay thinks they're beautiful flowers to give to mommies LOL. I also enjoy pulling out bindweed. I hate the stuff and it's everywhere here also. I take great joy especially in finding an unopened seed pod and snapping it off the vine. Usually accompanied by "oh no you don't you dirty bugger"!!! Holly |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Rag Weed!!!! I hate the stuff!!! Very allergic. I get great pleasure in ripping it out before the pollen season starts. It's the only thing I ever tried weed killer (Round-up) on. It doesn't seem to matter, it still comes back. This does give me an excuse to put in new flowers though, you have to weed flower beds. Suzie |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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If I have to have weeds, at least I can have pretty ones!!!
I really do love the bright clear yellow flowers of oxalis. And bind weed is also welcome in my yard as long as it isn't choking anything out. I had some lemon balm escape into the lawn, and now when I mow, it smells wonderful!!!
Crab grass is a different matter! OUT OUT OUT!!!!!!!!!
Sharon |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| You guys need to come live with me, because I hate weeding! Love planting, hate weeding. Mabie its just mindset? Mabie this year if I tell myself its not so bad, mabie I will enjoy it? Becky |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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- Posted by Duffy Johnstown Pa (My Page) on
Sun, Feb 23, 03 at 7:39
| Gotta go with mint too. I have chocolate mint, it does make weeding smell soooo good!! I have a grudging admiration for such a determined plant that it will even grow UNDER my porch, in total and complete darkness. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Ok, all you weed lovers are sick........ I agree some weeds are prettier than others, but when you have 5 acres of them and no help what so ever.......It's overwheming! I especially hate Bermuda Grass. I believe a nuclear bomb wouldn't kill it! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Anybody out there want to pull my quackgrass? I alway think I really got it and it comes back to mock me everytime. Weeding anything in good soil is not to horrible but try pulling weeds from clay. I have had 2 good days outside (8 hours each). I am madly trying to pull every cool season weed I find, along with cleaning beds. I am so sore I limp. Isn't weeding just great? |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Here, in spite of copious quantaties of bind weed, the one that takes the prize is bromme (sp?) grass. This stuff will shoot 5 ft runners in March, its in everything. It grows through carrots and potatoes. The clippings start plants. I go through a 2 gal jug of Roundup Ultra every two years just trying to keep it in check |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I hate weeds, but if I had a choice. The mallow when it is little. But hate chicory and some type of thistle that grows like bindweed. I hate those with a passion and bindweed comes real close to that. But they are easier to get rid of than the other two. Pineapple mint I don't mind pulling and sometimes need to remember that I still like the plant. I planted it didn't I but I didn't realize how much they like to grow! I hate creeping grass too! OH, Yellow Arch Angel stinging nettle. I love the flowers but hate this invasive ground cover with a passion. I allow the flowers to bloom but I need to cut it down right away and use weed be gone. But somehow the flower seeds get away. But at least I can control it. Super plant for an embankment or undertrees where other plants can't grow. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Little purple violets. They were all over my yard last year. I loved them. But I moved, and don't really want such an invasion, so now I root the little buggers out and make sure they are not throwing seeds around. Vicki |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I am cultivating Sedum acre, definitely a weed around here. Nothing else will grow in the back under two maples and a spruce. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Burdock. I fight it in bush and in field, but still it comes back. I chop it down to the ground and then it makes burrs right at ground level. It mimics other, more desirable plants and tricks me into letting it be. Then it has the nerve to use me (and everyone and everything else here) as temporary baby sitters while we scatter its progeny here and there. It is pushy, aggressive and not very attractive.
But I admire its tenacity and will to live. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Goldenrod is a favorite weed of mine. It blooms late in the season when color is a little sparse and it provides food for about as many beneficial critters as I've seen with a plant. Dandelions have their charm as well, though my neighbors would not appreciate an abundance of seeds coming from my yard. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Ground ivy, aka creeping charlie. I spent hours pulling this stuff out of my beds this spring and its still popping up. I don't compost it because it would probably take over the compost pile! You gotta admire the tenacity.........and it does have pretty purple flowers (shhh, don't let my hubby hear that, he's declared war on this stuff!)
Cherie |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I have these wild phlox (mauve colored) that took over my garden for a while. I have managed to eliminate most of them but have left them in one area just because butterflies absolutely love them. They are obviously good for the environment in some way if they attract so many, especially the yellow swallowtails. I just have to keep an eye on them so they don't get out of hand. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Hey guys, leave the dandelions if you can stand it, i saw a great photo on the Gallery of a butterfly on one --! Re: the lawn -- if its green, i leave it. My grass isn't that great and the weeds keep the thin spots looking green when its mowed.... |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Bindweed is the bane of my existance. I was out in the back garden (the bindweed infested one) and I see that the bindweed is beginning to pop up now. I was standing there looking at one that had invaded a new bed. I was making a hissing noise of disgust when my husband came up behind me and said in his best English accent "Don't touch it mother, it's evil!" If you've ever seen the movie Time Bandits you'll catch the reference. I about fell over laffing. So, now everytime I see a bindweed I have this phrase in an English accent going through my head! "Don't touch it mother, it's evil!" Needless to say, we hope to conquer evil with Round-up. Diann
Iowa Z5a |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Buttercups brighten up the far end of the lot- always pull a ton out, but never all. Softness of the heart (or head, maybe). I guess they aren't a weed after all, if I like them! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Wisteria. It is a pain in the butt to pull out, but at least it makes nice purple flowers for me right?
Also Dandelions. They make a nice salad. If you have Wisteria as a plant in your garden not a weed, take this from One Who Knows- cut off the little runners BEFORE They turn into Big runners. they will take over you yard, and your neighbors yard, and I doubt your neighbors need it... |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Dollarweed.... gives me a perverse joy to pull up those long runners. It has infiltrated my border grass so the best I can do there is pinch off the leaves. And, I kid you not, I saw it being sold in Lowe's yesterday as pennywort, 'a marginal aquatic plant.' It's the SAME PLANT! I wish someone would come dig mine up for me. My dad christened them $#!+ lilies many years ago because they grew in profusion over the septic tank.
Debi |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| TickerToo - good luck with the round up on that bindweed of yours - i think mine is a mutant strand because i can hear is laughing at me while i'm digging, pulling, cursing it out of the yard! and the roundup does nothing but make it angry. i'd love to throw it on the hot driveway and let it there to whither and die for all the rest of it to see -or maybe i should be setting it on a pike at the end of the yard.... my latest tool to attack with is one of those dandelion pullers - long metal thing with a bit of a y at the end - i just hang onto the little sprouted bits and dig with that thing. i'm getting more and more every time but now it's retreating to the peonies that have been in place for about 30+ years. i bet it's wrapped around the roots. *sigh*
Friz |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Sweet Annie. Found out what it was last year on this forum. Annual, smells nice, non-irritating, easy to pull. I'm a little surprised people like bindweed, it even smothers the poor spotted knapweed. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes creeping charlie! It's got pretty flowers and leaves, fall color and it grows under the deck, what more could you want? Of course, I'm not as big a fan of grass as many people are... I was also very sad when the guy who cuts my lawn shaved the grass down so low he got all the violets. I hope they come back in the fall. I just have to convince the yard guy to let the grass stay higher. Tara |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Beggar Ticks and Spanish Needles. I know butterflies love Spanish Needles, but I broke my elbow and couldn't pull weeds for awhile, so it completely took over one area. I had to sit for HOURS pulling it out of the clothes I had on when I pulled it out. My neighbor said "You should have worn your rain poncho." NOW she tells me! Beggar ticks come up all in my lawn, and the weed killers don't seem to touch them. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| My favorite, California poppies! They are all over the place in mass! I pull out their long orange roots and more seeds come up! They must be the prettiest gosh darn "weed" around here. :) |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Wild roses! You need a suit of armor on before trying to get rid of those. They have taken over a large portion of my back yard so I guess I'll have to learn to live with them. Thought about planting raspberries with them and maybe they would stick each other to death! I also like the johnny jump-ups. They have such happy faces. Tanna |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| It's so hard to choose between purple violets (Viola sororia) and asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis) that I will choose them both - and have them both! Pretty Pretty Pretty!! At least the violets are native. Also, my zone envy stops when I am enjoying 'southern weed treats' like morning glories, ruellia, 4'0'clocks, etc... without fear of invasiveness! |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Wild Violets!!! Very invasive, makes knotty roots that steal the soil from other plants, but... soooo charming in the spring when they bloom all over my yard! I leave them and by now the flowers are hidden beneath the foliage, I just pull them up where I don't want them... they will be back next year. Not to mention I made over $400.00 selling them this spring!! ye-ha! (hope this wild violet shot comes through) Also, Tufted Knotweed Love it!!!! its almost like an ornamental grass, I pull it where I don't want it and leave it where I don't mind it! |
Here is a link that might be useful: Tufted Smartweed
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I enjoy purslane, as I snack on it while I am gardening. In fact, I encourage it to grow larger before I devour it. It's tasty, and it is allegedly rich in beta-carotenes and antioxidants. I like it anyway:-) |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| I secretly think spurge is kind of pretty, all the while obsessing over it and pulling it out whenever I see even a tiny bit of it. Ambivalence. Not a good sign. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Honeysuckle. Love the smell. I need to prune that sucker though, it's getting a bit straggly. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| OK, so it's really a tree. But every spring I turn around, and there is another ailanthus trying to make a stand here. Arghhh. Yes, and have the bindweed, and the dandelions, and crabgrass, too. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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Bindweed is nasty and makes my blood boil. As a farmer I have become very dissatisfied with all the chemicals we use and even then we do not eradicate, only temporarily control. There should be holistic, natural ways to deal with this. Older farmers tell me they used salt to sterilize the soil. Chemicals can sterilize and do this. Of course we want to grow things, not kill them and look at bare ground. I also seen a study that said copper could do this. I would like to put some copper or salt 2 foot down into the soil through a pipe to see if that would work. This is where the roots could absorb this. Do roots need a surfactant like we use when we spray the leaves with chemicals? We have to kill the roots. Any suggestions?
Desperate farmer |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Yes, Japanese Honeysuckle would be my favorite weed, always had it in our yard growing up & mom was always chewing me out for picking the flowers!I also love the Moss Rose Portulaca, it is great ground cover & keeps the other not so pretty weeds from taking over. They also have seed pods you can pop off & save for the next year since it is an annual. NOW if I could just get rid of that darned crabgrass! arghhhhhhhhhh........ |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| Favorite weed would have to be the morning glory. Not just any morning glory, but the one with the Big Purple flowers. The one with the flowers that stay most of the day, not just in the morning. Always going where I don't want it, twining around everything, but still, love having it. Dies back every winter, but comes back bigger and better each spring. Weeds I love pulling....creeping beggarweed, florida pusley, chamber bitters..not necesarily in that order, though. Enjoy pulling them and imagining their screams as I snatch their &*#@%! little roots from the ground. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| My favorite invasive weeds would be dandelions [childhood flashback]--and ivy. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| i have had quack grass so thick that you literally had to chop your way through it..so i guess you could say i hate it..too bad you can't eat it. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| For years I tried to eradicate all the morning glory from my yard and every year there seemed to be more....Until 2 years ago I decided to just live with it..I would no longer dig up the entire yard searching for that last bit of root...I just began to cut it off whenever I saw it knowing full well that it was laying in wait just beneath the surface...now finally my yard no longer looks like a crazed weeder went through it and to anyone else walking through my garden it appears weed free! Only I know the secret and yet I still have that crooked grin and slightly crazed look in my eye that I dont' think will ever go away. |
RE: My Favourite Invasive Weeds
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| We have all kinds of creepers in our lawn. But my favorite would have to be the false strawberry- soft to step on, cute lily pad shaped leaves, small nice yellow flowers and those pops of red! Small edible strawberry like fruits for the birds! What a great invader. Love it, love it! Hubby plans to take round up to it, but it won't be phased- it comes back every year! I also love roadside chicory and cut leaved teasel. Chicory is beautiful with true blue flowers- it looks very weedy and tough- I like that. Teasel just looks like a hard core spiky monster with multiple heads. I wouldn't dare mess with it! Great weed! |
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