Here is a link that might be useful: My weeds

The links to the individual pictures don't work anymore for some reason, but here is the album that contains them all.
{{gwi:495772}}ID My Weeds

#7 Spotted catsear, false dandelion Hypochoeris radicata

It's late and my brain's old and tired :) I'll do more tomorrow evening.

Looks like you have some flowers and ornamental grasses in there too.

Pic numbers from your photosite.
1. quackgrass
2. Oxalis??? What did the flowers look like? Did the pods "spit" seed?
3. dont know, maybe a vinca?
4. 5. 13. all black nightshade
6. bleeding heart or columbine
7. spotted catsear
8. ornamental or native grass  bottlebrush squirrel tail?
9. tall thin plant in front  donÂt know
10. donÂt know. Does it by chance have purple flowers? Sounds like invasive roots. Purple Loosestrife???
11. ground geranium
12. 19. both sowthistle
14. Poa spp. Some type of bluegrass
15. MareÂs Tail  this is actually a bad weed as the seeds blow all over and it is showing resistance to Roundup herbicide in some areas.
16. some type of flower
17. looks like a bromegrass
18. a senecio of some type
I hope this helps some. If you want help on control IÂll be glad to share some thoughts next week if others donÂt chime in before.

Of those I recognize, Weed's ID's are right on with mine.

Some of these are flowers or other ornamental plants, but where unwanted, they are still a weed. Some of these are annuals, so merely preventing seed production will reduce their prevalence going forwards. I would guess you haven't had this place for too long and the flowers and ornamental grasses came with the property. I say this thinking you are probably not wedded to the current landscaping and this provides an excellent opportunity to redesign your landscaping, then deal with the weeds as part of your new landscaping plan. Where you want grass, many of the broadleaf weeds can be controlled by mowing the lawn to keep them short & prevent weed production. Broadleaf lawn care herbicides can also help to get them under control until the seeds in the soil stop germinating in a few years, and continued mowing and periodic broadleaf weed control, and grass competition will wear down the perennials. Although some get really upset having unwanted grasses in their lawns, I don't feel the lawn has to be 100% the same species and having a variety of grasses is OK if the lawn is green.

Where you want flowers, you might consider laying down landscaping fabric with holes cut where you want to plant flowers. This reduces your weeding to the flowers themselves and you don't have to weed the spaces between the flowers.

These two things will cut your weeding problems down substantially.

Round-up is a good tool to clean everything up before you start, but if you don't replant the ground to something or cover it with landscaping fabric/mulch, new weeds will just crop up. While establishing new grass, you can spray lawn areas with light solutions of broadleaf weed killer to reduce seedling weed competition, but I would stay away from a full label rate until the grass has had a few months to get established.

Photo 12 shows annual sowthistle (a much easier weed to control than perennial sowthistle, but also much peskier) around a young fruit? tree. Clean out around the tree, put some landscaping fabric down around the tree, and mulch to hide the fabric. Make sure the fabric has plenty of expansion ability--slits or a piece wrapped around the tree, not a single piece with a hole in the middle so it doesn't girdle the trunk as it grows. Keep the mulch back a few inches from the trunk to reduce the possibility of promoting rot.

Good luck. Weed can surely give you some much better advice.

Beeone and weed,
Thank you so much. Yes, I need all the information you are willing to give to prevent the weeds from taking over our yard.

Here are some answers
2) The flower looks like that yellow bell shaped one in the picture.
8) I actually like these guys. I am just afraid of anything growing as volunteers now, because first we like them and let them grow, since they look nice and then they start taking over the yard, especially the plant #10
10) They have pretty bell shaped fragile looking pink-purple flowers. I see them wrapped up at Safeway florists sometimes and kinda fee strange when I see people paying money to buy these things.

We would like to have a sensible garden with respectable gardening practices, but I realize I can't do all at once.

We won't have a lawn. Too many reasons, but yeah no lawn. We will cover a good portion behind our house by a deck. Therefore I feel that we should kill everything in that area, since it would be a nuisance for plants to keep sticking through. We are on a hill, so there is plenty of ground water, even if we don't water and I feel that some persistent weeds may keep growing.

We have roses. I would like to roundup some things, but they are apparently very sensitive. I read about granular roundup and drop spreaders, but don't know how they work. Some information would be useful.

We had to clear a portion in the back of our yard from these very persistent broad leaf ornamental plants that looked like dwarf irises, without flowers, to grow some vegetables. They had tubular roots and the soil is mostly clay, so it was hard work. They didn't come back too much after about 8 months now, but the heavy rains haven't started. I would prefer to not go through the same thing again this year, if we can prep that area better.

I also read that it is bad to pull up weeds since it opens up the soil and allows new seeds germinating. Is this through?

Is the landscaping fabric a better choice than newspapers/cardboard?

How about ground cover? I read something like strawberries can be a good ground cover and would prevent the yellowing grasses from growing and strawberries sound good:) Does this work?

Which of my weeds are annuals that can simply be reduced by cutting down? What do I do with the rest?

Thank you so much for any information you can provide.

Pinar

Nightshade, sowthistle, and marestail would be annuals, so pulling and preventing seed production would put them on a downward spiral. The ground geranium is probably an annual also but I'm not familiar with it. The cat's ear #7 and #19, some kind of senecio, are probably either annuals or winter annuals and controlling seed production would gradually remove them, also. # 17, the brome, looks to me like it could be an annual brome and eliminating seed production would reduce the population. If it is an annual, Roundup would control it fairly easily or you could pull it or hoe it or rototill it.

#1, quackgrass, isn't that clear to me that it is quackgrass, but it likely is. It is a nasty perennial that spreads by both seed and roots. Definitely prevent seed production. Spraying with roundup when it is 6-8 inches high and growing strongly will nail it pretty well. Some roots will survive and start to regrow again later, but much weaker, so a second treatment will be necessary. You can pull it when the ground is wet so you get all the roots, but it will take much longer. Main thing is to get all the quackgrass. The one in the picture is a small plant, but it looks like there is more of it directly behind the one in the center of the picture. If you don't get it all, the root runners will quickly reclaim the space.

The other grasses are usually easiest to kill with roundup, often 1 treatment will do it.

# 10 doesn't really look like purple loosestrife. I believe it is a garden flower, probably perennial.

The bleeding heart or columbine can easily be killed by chopping out, much to my disappointment in the past.

I don't see anything here that is immune to roundup (maybe resistant so use multiple, thorough treatments on them), but you can use pulling, weeding, rototilling, etc. to get rid of them over a little longer period of time.

As to newspaper/cardboard vs. landscape fabric, the main difference is the landscape fabric won't degrade for decades so has very low maintainance.

Stirring the soil will usually mix the seedstock in the soil, bringing dormant seed up where it will germinate and planting new seed lying on the surface. With bare soil there is no competition so the seeds will grow. You will have to prevent seed production for a period of time to reduce the seed reservoir in the ground. Typically, most weed seeds will be gone in 5-7 years, although some will last 20 years, and letting one weed go to seed will set you back again. (Not that you'll ever be free of weeds--they'll still blow in, move in from the neighbors, come with birds, pets, wildlife, on muddy shoes, etc.). For ease of maintenance, that is why I suggest using landscape fabric or paper/cardboard to cover the ground and reduce the area you have to weed.

#8 looks like a bunch type of grass. It won't normally spread by roots, so it shouldn't spread that easily, though you will have to watch the seeds. Seedling grasses are easily controlled with a hoe, but let them get started and it could be a different story.

The native bush type roses tend to be somewhat resistant to roundup, although it does damage them--often their new leaves will be small, curled or twisted, and often have a very white color. blooms will be small and white if they bloom at all. After a year, they should be recovered. A direct shot is just as likely to kill them as not, but a glancing blow will just deform them for a while. Hybrid roses are much more sensitive because they don't have the root systems to withstand a light shot of roundup, but still if you are careful not to have any drift, not to treat any foliage that will touch the roses, and not to touch the roses with your hands or clothes that might have come in contact with the roundup, they are pretty safe. A big piece of cardboard held up between what you want to kill and what you don't makes a pretty good shield while spraying.

I would grow strawberries to eat, not as a groundcover. They can form a pretty thick patch, but they are low growing and weeding is probably the biggest drawback & source of work to growing strawberries. Still, planted using plastic or paper mulch between the plants and heavily mulching with straw or organic matter will hold the weeds down and make weeding more pleasant when you can eat as you weed.

Oh, thank you so much! So much information.

I have two quick questions. If disturbing the soil is such a bad thing for seed germination, why is rototilling recommended?

Also, you said seedling grasses are controlled with a hoe. How are they controlled with a hoe? What am I supposed to do, dig them out? I know it probably sounds like a stupid question to you, but yeah....:)

Thanks again!
Pinar

No question is stupid when you don't know the answer.

Most weed seeds germinate fairly shallow in the soil, 1/4-1/2" deep. Disturbing the surface can move surface seeds down a short distance where they will germinate. Rototilling can bury the seeds deeply where they will remain dormant for years, and it can bring deeply buried seeds to the surface where they will germinate quickly. Sunlight/UV light will inhibit germination of some weeds, thus they won't grow when on the surface, but bury them 1/2" down and they will take off.

The thing with rototilling is that it is a relatively low labor way of working the soil to destroy the weeds that have germinated. You will work seeds into the germination zone, but the goal is to remove the weeds before they get too big, and rototilling is usually a lot easier and faster than hoeing, so you have to do it several times a year whenever the weeds start growing. When you are rototilling, you are removing growing weeds and not worrying about ungerminated seed. Mulching can come in very handy here. After rototilling to remove the growing plants, put down a good layer of mulch that will have the same effect as burying the weeds on the surface deeply and keep them from germinating, or if they do, keep them from reaching the light.

Seedling grasses tend to have very fragile root systems. Chopping the hoe downwards while pulling it towards you just below the surface will break the grass off below the crown and kill it. Pull towards you and work methodically. That way, each time you move to new weeds, you are pulling them onto ground you just shaved off so you can see that you didn't miss anything. On larger plants, you typically have to just plain chop/dig the plant out and you often get roots and all, especially with bunch grasses. The key with hoeing is to save labor and not to move a lot of dirt, just get it under the surface to separate the crown from the root while the weeds are very small.

If you have a perennial that spreads by roots, removing the top won't kill the plant, but it does starve the roots of food so constant attention to chop every sprout will gradually starve the roots out.

Regardless of how you go after them, you will always have weeds and you can either use use mulches, landscaping fabrics, competitive plants such as lawns and groundcovers, gravel walkways on top of plastic, etc. to reduce the labor of controlling the weeds, or you can spend lots of time and effort weeding or you can just let the yard go free and have the neighbors complaining about the mess next door. Which combination of these things you use is up to you to get where you want--low effort gardening to sit and enjoy, good excercise and mental rehabilitation weeding and caring for the plants, or harried neglect.