anti-social weeds

Best Worst in my Gardens

Do your weeds socialize? Mine mostly do not. That’s at least true for summer’s worst weeds. Each has seemingly staked out its territory in various of my gardens or parts of gardens, and keeps there mostly to itself.

The all-time biggest offender has been Canadian thistle (Cirsium arvense). Its bristly stems and leaves have insinuated themselves all over the place to the west of our main vegetable garden, in among a hogepodge of berry plants. How clever of them, especially getting in there among the gooseberries, where it’s hard enough to pull them from amongst the clusters of berrty stems, and made moreso by gooseberry’s spines.

One control — not cure, though — for the thistle invasion is mulch. Because of thistle’s deep, energetic, errant roots, just any mulch will not do. So I’ve resorted, hopefully just for this year, to laying down corrugated cardboard topped with arborist wood chips, a technique beloved to permaculturalists and historically loathed by me. Read more