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garden:cultivate:tasks:weed:about

About weeds

This is not about weeds you can eat and how to live with weeds! Trust me! For me weeds are serious competitors for harvest of healthy vegetables. With weeds I'm really to search and destroy.

Weeds from seeds

It appears we're lucky when a weed has only the ability to reproduce by going to seed. These seeds go to the seed bank and germinate later, sometimes years later.

You'll see in “weeds from stolons and rhizomes” below that there are more threatening ways for weeds to reproduce.

Seed bank

The weed seed bank is the reserve of viable weed seeds present in the soil. Some of these seeds may have persisted in the soil from previous years. When I find a weed sprout and remove it and its root, I successfully withdraw from the seed bank. These withdrawals generally are the easiest because we have removed one germinated seed forever.

I don't expect ever to completely delete the seed bank, but the obvious strategy is to withdraw regularly and prevent weeds from making deposits additional. This suggests pulling weeds regularly, and never allowing any one of them to go to seed.

Opening the bank vault

Roto-tilling is a common way to attempt to control existing weeds. But it is only briefly successful and becomes a perpetual necessity because each tilling “opens the seed bank vault” by exposing more seeds to a suitable climate for germination and breaking up and spreading roots and rhizomes. Also, tilling puts back in the soil any seeds that are on the weeds. These initial “withdrawals” seem never to deplete the vault.

Any time I dig down into the soil and disturb it I'm bringing new seeds to the top where they have the heat and light to germinate and sprout.

So I “open the vault” slightly, allow seeds near the top to sprout, then terminate them. I'm careful not to open the vault any further - some seeds will die, some will remain viable waiting for their chance at moisture and sunlight. I'll get them next time around.

Weeds from stolons and rhizomes

Some weeds propagate by extending their root system. A rhizome is an below-graound extension of a plant, in which case you can't see anything until one or more leaves emerge. A stolon is an above-the-soil extension.

Totally rhizomatious!

Weeds extending their rhizomes to expand their reachThe weeds next to a compost pile extended their rhizomes under the cover looking for places to expand. I raked away the soil to expose their ambition. Even though there was no sunlight, they spread out hoping to create new weeds.

Rhizomes and stolons are adapted roots that enable the plant to spread faster and endure harsher weather conditions than annuals.

Some of these weeds also propagate with seeds. It's necessary to get serious about these weeds, especially when they establish a root-hold.

If incompletely removed, it will regrow from a root. Once stable these spread by extending by ‘rhizomes' or “stolons” to form new plants.

Removing one crown rarely pulls up the rest of the family members as these stolons are weak and snap too easily.

More about these later.

In practice, the soil’s seed bank also includes the tubers, bulbs, rhizomes, and other vegetative structures through which some of our most serious perennial weeds propagate themselves.

garden/cultivate/tasks/weed/about.txt · Last modified: 2014/10/04 19:05 by davidbac