Gardener begins to wage war on the first weeds

It’s as reliable as any other perennial occurrence in nature: The spring weeds have arrived with gusto. The presence of these naughty, rogue plants at least provides job security for the gardener until the first killing frost in autumn.

As you’re down on your hands and knees waging war against the weeds, you may feel like a surgeon at times. You find yourself juggling two or three garden implements to attack one tenacious weed. There’s the three-pronged clawlike tool that scratches the soil surface and loosens shallowly rooted weeds. There’s the weeding hook for those that are well anchored to the Earth. And then there’s the trowel – possibly the spade for extreme cases – to remove those that refuse to release their hold on your garden.

It boggles the mind how quickly weeds crop up in our beloved beds. An area left perfectly tended in autumn may be thoroughly invaded by spring. You see, there is a weed seed “bank” in the soil, waiting until just the right time to yield a small army of seedlings that will grow into a mass of unruly plants whose sole mission in life, it seems, is to take over the garden.

Availability of open space, proper temperature and moisture conditions and a host of other environmental factors all come into play as to when these weeds emerge. The cool weather of spring often prompts certain weeds such as mustard to germinate. When the warmer weather of early summer finally arrives, we’ll witness the arrival of another mix of weed species.

In addition to this “bank” of seeds in the soil, weed seeds travel on the wind or creep into the garden bed from underground roots or stems. They may be inadvertently collected on, then dropped from people’s clothing or the fur of animals. They may come masked among compost or other soil amendments. Sometimes weeds enter the garden on plants traded with friends or moved from another area of the yard.

Unless we want to spend the rest of our gardening lives pulling and tugging at nuisance plants, it’s important to analyze exactly what types of weeds are cropping up in our garden. The presence of certain weeds – purslane, for example – may indicate poor, compacted or acidic soil. Assessing the soil through a soil test and then adjusting it appropriately may limit the presence of those weeds.

Other weeds may be present simply because there is vacant space in the garden that offers opportunity for growth. Weed seeds that blow into the garden on the wind may easily occupy open space. Then again, they may blow into the garden, nestle up against the base of a hardy perennial and – using the cover of our own cultivated plants – root, reproduce and send out another batch of seed right under our noses.

Dandelions, for example, use this strategy. Part of what makes this particular plant such a nuisance is sheer reproduction rate. You see, dandelions are “composite” flowers. That is, the fluffy yellow flower formation we may view as a single flower is actually hundreds of tiny flowers, each producing its own seed. So, if you do a bit of math, you’ll see that one dandelion seed germinates, grows leafy material and produces, say five flowers, each bearing, say, 100 seeds. Thus, one seed has give rise to 500 seeds. This illustration doesn’t bode well for us, considering it’s not uncommon for a typical yard to feature hundreds of dandelions just waiting to reproduce.

All things considered, the best way to limit the potential of dandelions and others is to prevent them from flowering in the first place. This, of course, is more easily said than done, since the first thing many of these confounded plants do when one mows the lawn is send up a mass of flowers in a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of their species.

Then there are those weeds that send out extensive root systems as a matter of survival and perpetuating their species, but let’s not talk about that right now. Let’s instead go find a tulip to gaze upon. It’s spring! We have all summer to battle the weeds.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.