The Auld Enemy

25 Responses to The Auld Enemy

1. Richard Wintle says:

   April 3, 2009 at 3:20 pm

   Their allies, the thistles, will not be far behind. I am girding on my weed-pick and garden gauntlets as we speak.
2. Brian Derby says:

   April 3, 2009 at 3:33 pm

   In all the houses I have gardened in there has been an implaccable and obdurate enemy. In order they were:

   Himalayan Balsam (student house in Cambridge) – it at least has a charmingly explosive seed dispersal mechanism and pretty flowers.

   My fist house of my own had a Ground Elder infestation, I had to sieve the flower bed and introduce piling to prevent invasion from next door.

   My next two houses were in Oxford, a world centre for lesser bindweed infestation. This one is a real pain to eliminate.

   And finally in Manchester we have Horsetail. To quote…
   This is one of the most difficult weeds to eradicate in the garden situation. Once spotted to is important to go to work immediately to eradicate it. A perennial weed which grows in a wide variety of places from, boggy ground to sand dunes. It has two types of growth, in spring brown asparagus-like shoots appear with cones at the tips and these produce spores. Later the more familiar thin green, branched stems appear and these remain until the winter. Both are produced from creeping underground rhizomes, which go down about 1.5 metres.
   Dandelions are easy and you can eat them.
3. Richard Wintle says:

   April 3, 2009 at 4:04 pm

   Those are a bunch of nasties, Brian. My neighbours have some broad-leafed thing with spade-shaped leaves in their flowerbed that sends long shoots (runners? is that what they’re called?) underground, and smells distinctly of rotten meat when the stems are broken. It hasn’t made its way over to us, fortunately.
   Dandelions aren’t as easy as you might think – I keep pulling them out, but the teeny tiny bits of root I inevitably leave behind are excellent at sending them back up again. Argh.
   The birdseed in the back yard is a totally different story. We’ve cultivated quite the crop of canary grass, millet and baby sunflowers over the years.
4. Cath Ennis says:

   April 3, 2009 at 4:55 pm

   We have other kinds of invasive weeds too, with long runners underground that I can never get rid of. I don’t know what they’re called though. One of them has some rather attractive flowers in the late Spring, but has a tendency to climb and choke other plants.
   I am trying to be very zen and consider my lawn to be a biodiversity project, and my weeds to be carbon offsets. Mixed success to date.
5. Henry Gee says:

   April 3, 2009 at 5:02 pm

   Cath: what you need is a Bunny of DOOM

   In various gardens I’ve had bindweed and ground elder. I’d LOVE to have horsetails for their Palaeozoic ambience. The worst pest I ever had was couch grass (aka ‘twitch’) on an allotment – after twwo years it was a case of fighting the long defeat, and losing.
6. Cath Ennis says:

   April 3, 2009 at 5:08 pm

   Or I need to train some of the crows.
   Brian, is ground elder the same thing as cow parsley?
7. Åsa Karlström says:

   April 3, 2009 at 5:38 pm

   Cath> If you can’t beat them, join ’em. In other words, make wine 🙂 you’ll need like 3 l of flowers (only the yellow) and then water, sugar and lemons… leave for 3 months and hope for the enzymes in the flowers have worked.
8. Graham Steel says:

   April 3, 2009 at 5:40 pm

   Having a Bunny of DOOM is indeed an option, but be very careful if you are not the owner….
9. Åsa Karlström says:

   April 3, 2009 at 5:41 pm

   ..and of course there is the leaves as salad…. if the wino idea takes too long I mean 😉
10. Richard Wintle says:

    April 3, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    I’ve eaten dandelion greens as salad. I would recommend not bothering.
    Also, I’ve read Dandelion Wine. Again – I would recommend not bothering.
    Our backyard is also being overtaken by clover, which even the Wild Bunnies Of Doom(TM) cannot keep under control. Sporadic crabgrass infestations in the front yard are also a problem. Certain other people who live in the house are considering ripping it all up and re-sodding.
11. steffi suhr says:

    April 3, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    …Oxford, a world centre for lesser bindweed infestation.
    Surely that must be Colorado. An introduction from Europe there, I believe, and very successful indeed. At least it’s pretty…
    I think I know the ‘broad-leafed things’ Richard mentions, but can’t find them right now – I believe they’re originally from China (like many, many other weedy-type plants worldwide – they’re just very hardy – drought, cold and heat resistant – hard to beat that). They are everywhere at this point: we had them in our garden in Colorado and I see them here in the forest around Lueneburg and in its parks. Oh yeah, and we had this in abundance as well. Truly deserves its name ‘stinking sumac’. Coloradans take their weeds seriously in general… (sorry for the link overkill there – got a bit carried away).
    Weeds are almost as cool as parasites.
12. steffi suhr says:

    April 3, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    Oh, I forgot my all time favourite: puncture vine. The name says it all. Not just fun when out bicycling, also when walking around with bare feet.
13. Cath Ennis says:

    April 3, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    Y’know, I think that the weed I mentioned with the attractive flowers is bindweed. Our version has white “trumpet” flowers.
    Puncture vine looks almost as evil as the Bunny of DOOM!
    Maybe I’ll try eating the dandelion leaves. If dandelion wine tastes anything like dandelion and burdock, I’ll leave well alone…
14. Cath Ennis says:

    April 3, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    I just Googled the following:
    Vancouver weed
    How stupid was that?!
    I can assure you there’s none of that growing in my garden that I’m aware of.
15. Henry Gee says:

    April 3, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    Japanese knotweed. Even carrying bits of I’d around on your person is a criminal offence, I believe. Like Angmering.
16. Åsa Karlström says:

    April 3, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    _I just Googled the following:
    Vancouver weed_
    Ha, like you need to google it up there… 😉
    I still have vivid thoughts about the custoums police who very throughtly interviewed a fair couple from Austrin, Texas (they did look like hippies a bit) on my greyhound trip from Vancouver to San Fran. The first question was “Are you certain you did not bring any illegal substances from this Vancouver trip?” I stood and watched since they were American and treated in a very suspiscious way whereas I was an alien on top of that 🙂
    Dandelions leaves aren’t that bad if you mix them in a salad with ruccola and other greens.
17. Cath Ennis says:

    April 3, 2009 at 10:12 pm

    I will plead the fifth.
18. Brian Derby says:

    April 4, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    A warning on eating too many dandelion leaves: the french word for them is Pis-en-lit.
19. Cath Ennis says:

    April 4, 2009 at 7:15 pm

    Blimey. Thanks, Brian!
20. Henry Gee says:

    April 4, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    Brians right. Cath. This explains why we never let Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM into bed with us.
21. Sabbi Lall says:

    April 5, 2009 at 6:01 am

    Yup, I’d get little Luci-furry on the Pis-en-lit case.
22. Richard Wintle says:

    April 5, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Ah, it all comes back to bathroom humour eventually doesn’t it?
    Speaking of which, although I don’t think my neighbour’s infestation is Japanese Knotweed, the Wikipedia entry contains this gem:
    Japanese knotweed is a concentrated source of emodin, used as a nutritional supplement to regulate bowel motility.
    See?
23. Cath Ennis says:

    April 9, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Can anyone identify this?

    I spent an hour on Saturday yanking as much of it as I could out of the garden, but there was more than ever of it by Tuesday. It has incredibly long underground runners that I just can’t pull out. I think it’s going to be one of those “10 minutes every single day” jobs.
24. Cath Ennis says:

    April 9, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    p.s. Google really is no use at all for identifying weeds around these parts.
25. roger jaustin says:

    December 4, 2009 at 8:32 am

    It is an interesting and beautiful blog.
    =============
    Roger
    vancouver flowers

Comments are closed.