On Not Pulling a Weed

4/11/2020

Weed mitigation is one of the most important aspects of creating a low-maintenance pollinator garden. Often, this mitigation needs to start weeks and months before the first plant goes in the ground in order to clean up a space gone feral. But what happens when weeds keep popping up, especially in that important first year after planting when weed management is critical?

Don't pull weeds if you can help it. What happens when you do?

1) You expose dormant weed seeds embedded in the soil that come up with that weed, and then they germinate and you have more weeds.

2) That wound in the bed, full of exposed soil, is the perfect growth medium for a weed seed to blow in on and germinate.

Just as in site prep as in weeding, the less disturbance you can create in the soil the better. This is why we are not advocates of tilling or sod cutting.

Sometimes it's best to deadhead weeds as they flower, especially if they are annuals like foxtail, either by hand or mowing; often in the first year of a meadow or prairie garden, mowing keeps weeds down and prevents them from competing with the native plants while the latter work on roots. Some deeply-taprooted, perennial weeds won't even budge, and you might have to kill them via other targeted means.

As for dandelions, let's welcome them in our beds. Not so much because they provide a good nutritional source of pollen for bees (they don't), but because they provide a solid green mulch and their taproots help open up clay soil. Green mulch is the key, because we don't tend to see wood mulch in prairies -- and there's a reason for that. Wood mulch can never work as effectively as green mulch, and can certainly never create the kind of ecosystem function (think runoff mitigation) or habitat that plants can. A densely layered garden is shading out weed seedlings while taking soil nutrients away from weed seedling's roots -- there's just no room to get a foothold.

We design gardens to get as much green cover as soon as possible. This may mean planting on 10-12" centers, or combining seeding with plugs. The latter looks like this: we design drifts and masses of forbs by planting plugs, then we sow in a matrix grass often alongside annuals and biennials. Sowing annual flowers with the matrix grass means we get even more cover sooner, but we also have some first year color since even perennial plugs will take a year or three to bloom. On some sites with very aggressive perennial weeds, it might be worth experimenting with very aggressive native plants.

Overall, try to refrain from yanking a weed and think about what it will take to restore ecological balance to your garden by using plants, otherwise you will be intensively weeding the rest of your life.

Most importantly, realize that every site presents unique challenges and opportunities -- there's seldom a one-size-fits-all solution. And even when we think there's a solution, nature throws a curve ball and we have to adapt after planting and rethink management.

Don't give up. Don't think it's too hard. This takes time. The garden you are making is one of the most important places for wildlife in your neighborhood. Keep at it. Learn. Let the space teach you. Evolve and thrive.

17 Comments

James McGee

4/11/2020 02:48:10 pm

Some of the things you are passing along have been proven incorrect by my real-world experience.

For example, “A densely layered garden is shading out weed seedlings while taking soil nutrients away from weed seedling's roots -- there's just no room to get a foothold.”

What you say is true for disturbance adapted species. Examples include evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta). However, there are many introduced invasive species that have no problem invading and dominating ancient remnant native ecosystems, not to mention native plant gardens. These include herbaceous species like sweet clover (Melilotus alba and Melilotus officinalis), crown vetch (Securigera varia), bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), teasel (Dipsacus sp.), purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) to name only a sample. The disturbances necessary for ecosystems to exist are the very weakness that lead them to be vulnerable to destruction from invasive species.

Another gardening legend you are passing along is “Overall, try to refrain from yanking a weed and think about what it will take to restore ecological balance to your garden by using plants, otherwise you will be intensively weeding the rest of your life.” As I mentioned in a comment in your last post, I have counted the number of weeds I have dug out each year from a native plant garden and the number is continually decreasing.

Let me give you an example. At my local park district the project coordinator was taught in college that weeds should be cut, instead of removed by the root. Each year, he organizes volunteers to come out and cut sweet clover. I did this with other volunteers for a few years. The problem was, the workday for the volunteers was always scheduled when the sweet clover was blooming and easy to find in June. After cutting, the sweet clover regrew, flowered, and set seed. Selective cutting can be effective but only during a narrow window between when the lower leaves begin dying and before seed is released. After a few years, I realized that no progress was being made on the issue. I asked the director if I could dig out the weeds by the root.

In the two acres behind the visitor center I dug up over 1000 sweet clovers that first year. The next year they burned. The number of sweet clovers was higher by about 100, but they were all smaller in size. The likely reason the sweet clovers were smaller was because they were all probably first year plants. I had dug up every sweet clover I could find the first season. The third year, I only found six sweet clover plants in this area. Since this area had graduated to the low management category, I expanded my efforts to other areas.

The problem with weed control is people make broad generalizations (now I am sounding like Chris Helzer) that aren’t applicable to specific situations and backed up by data. People really need to take a quality control approach to weed control, so they don’t spend their entire career doing something that does not work. This happens. I’ve seen it.

When you say, “Some deeply-taprooted, perennial weeds won't even budge, and you might have to kill them via other targeted means.” I hope you aren’t referring to spraying them with herbicide. No matter how carefully you spray herbicide, you are going to get some on adjacent plants. Even if you hand wick, the herbicide will be splashed onto nearby plant during rain blowing a big hole into the native plant garden that will be a bigger weed magnet than digging up the weed and causing a minimal amount of soil disturbance. There are ways to use herbicide without causing damage to adjacent vegetation. However, it is very labor intensive and no one I know, other than myself, is taking the effort. In my own garden, after hand wicking field thistle (Cirsium arvense), I cover them in plastic to minimize herbicide being splashed on adjacent plants during rain. This is the only technique I’ve found to be practical for this tenacious species.

Benjamin

4/11/2020 04:28:18 pm

"Most importantly, realize that every site presents unique challenges and opportunities -- there's seldom a one-size-fits-all solution. And even when we think there's a solution, nature throws a curve ball and we have to adapt after planting and rethink management."

Susan

5/25/2022 11:31:14 am

I agree. I have found that weeding garlic mustard, in particular, makes a huge impact on next years's growth and disturbs the soil very little. And like you say, I have cut garlic mustard when I have run out of time, only for it to re-bloom later. I think it depends a lot on the weed. As far as desirable tasks go, I dislike cutting almost as much as I do weeding.

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5/2/2021 11:49:05 pm

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8/25/2021 07:27:12 pm

I like your weed tips. I have a ton of weeds in the backyard. I'll have to consider getting a gardener.

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3/15/2022 08:49:29 am

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4/30/2022 09:40:39 am

I love your work, and acknowledge that every gardener is going to take the latest science (hopefully) and interpret how to respond to it in their own way. I also acknowledge that we are all humans and making mistakes is how we learn.

Hopefully in our work we do not make mistakes that alienate others (our neighbors) from us, or that are expensive (in either our labour or herbicides) to deal with once we realize we have made them. But as a gardener 17 years into my “becoming” native garden, I am being overwhelmed by “dandelions” spread about as a result of well-meaning people learning from memes (that likely originated in Europe, where they ARE native).

These are people whose tastes previously were limited to emerald green monotypic carpets, who now think they are doing something wonderful for nature by permitting thousands of yellow polka dots instead, and go about their day. This “feels” like an easy answer to “help the bees”. I don't agree, because this strategy simply ignores “the rest of the ecology”. And I am sorry that these thoughts don’t conveniently fit into a meme. We are only “just” beginning to explore on a deep scientific level how complex plants really are, and often what is going on is not what it looks like.

Isn't it amazing how some of our worst and most world-wide invasive plants are so small? How is it that they are so successful at colonizing ground that would once have been populated by other little perfectly wonderful native plants (like wild strawberries) that would/could do the same thing, there, on their home ground…if they had the space?

Allelopathy baby! This is an area of science that is only just beginning to be understood, and we gardeners need to be trying to understand the concept if we have hopes of improving the quality of our habitats for all species, especially birds which need a hell of a lot of caterpillars and other kinds of insects to reproduce. Not. Just. Bees.

Allelopathy is the ability of a plant to defend itself against other plants..to stake out territory so to speak. It is not "just" the 1' square foot rosette of the dandelions’ leaves shading out seedlings, but it is the known ability of these and many other species of plants to change the very chemistry of the soil to its advantage and suppress the roots and seedlings of the plants that were there. I read a paper the other day, where even pollen in some plants can be allelopathic to flowers of competing species. Wow. So bees can unwittingly carry the equivalent of toxic pollen herbicide to thwart competitors’ reproduction?

Allelopathy has been known about by farmers for a very long time.
Weeds are a threat to our food supply. But they widely use clover (another non-native genus of plants crowed about as “the easy answer” to a lawn) as a green crop because it is allelopathic to other plants, and "improves soil" for itself (and our potatoes), rendering a native plant's OWN HOME GROUND hostile to it. So now, where are our native colonizer species supposed to grow? Europe? Well, yes. Many of our North American native plants such as goldenrods are considered invasive there, because they are there without most of the animals that use them.

A study of the biochemistry of hawkweed introduced here compared to where they are native has demonstrated that it does not take a long time for a plant in a new environment to realize that its insect predators did not come to the new world with it; and, since it does not need to expend energy defending against what would eat it, puts its efforts into higher seed production and making room for itself underground by a form of “root warfare” with other species. Plants could compete with the chemists at Monasanto, lol, because they have to make do where their seeds grew and cannot run away. They defend and attack with chemistry. They are better “terraformers” than we imagine. We simply don't understand (or respect) plants very well as living organisms that are far from passive in their existence. They are living things that respond and adapt to new circumstances…especially if they have short generation times, which is a characteristic of most “weeds.”

This is SO important, because the plants that live in a place determine virtually every other animal that can live there, because we ALL depend upon them. Redefining our local diverse ecologies based on the same invasive plants that keep showing up on lists all over the world is a mistake. It is saying that reducing biodiversity because we don’t understand or care is “OK.”

Dandelions, hawkweeds (including Pilosella, the mouse eared hawkweed), knapweeds, coltsfoot, and likely many more plants have a great deal of ability in these strategies. We just don’t invest enough effort to do the research to understand them. Th

Benjamin Vogt

4/30/2022 09:48:23 am

Here's my April 25 post from the FB page Milk the Weed:

"I admit I'm a bit frustrated this morning regarding the topic of dandelions. So let's clear some things up.
I have never and will never advocate removing the European species from our garden beds, lawns, or city parks. First, it's a futile gesture. Genie + bottle. And since that gesture most often means employing indiscriminate herbicide, it's a non starter.
Second, while dandelions just don't hold a candle to native plant communities when it comes to wildlife support (adult and larval insects), I find GREAT value in other ecosystem services they provide. Here's a partial list:
1) Solid groundcover plant. We want layers in habitat gardens, and this takes up a layer most folks ignore. It blends in nicely when in a tightly knit community.
2) The nature of its habit / form means broad leaves help shade the soil, conserving moisture and preventing some other weed seeds from germinating.
3) The taproot helps open up compacted clay soil -- especially after construction.
Now, some studies have shown dandelion may be mildly allelopathic, reducing the ability of other plants to establish around it (its pollen may also be allelopathic). I'll take my chances."

MB Whitcomb

4/30/2022 09:53:03 am

(continued) Dandelions, hawkweeds (including Pilosella, the mouse eared hawkweed), knapweeds, coltsfoot, and likely many more plants have a great deal of ability in these strategies. We just don’t invest enough effort to do the research to understand them. They also have seeds that blow in the wind and spread long distances rapidly. The plants threatened are often plants dependent on seed spread by animals that are largely depauperate in numbers or totally absent in a heavily altered landscape dominated by humans with zero tolerance for "bugs". Ants, for example, get zero support in the clamor for pollinators, but are essential in the successful completion of life cycles for many native plants.

Some of the foreign plants can also spread underground, meaning, once given a “pass”, any piece of root or stem will be VERY difficult to remove and it also means they can reach out and physically attack other plants, starting with killing beneficial underground fungi, and above ground mosses and lichens which are the very backbone of soil health and plant succession in a northern system like mine…you can clearly see this if you look carefully at a patch of them invading an area of native grasses.

The “new to my area” invasive fall dandelion (Scorzonoides) appears (in my field experience) to be HIGHLY allelopathic, as it showed up only a few years ago and is taking over parts of my land like Cortez took over the Aztec empire. In the last few years, in the beautiful (fairly) natural area where I live (Cape Breton Island, which is world renowned for the indigenous beauty of its untrammeled landscapes) hawkbit (Crepis spp.) has also appeared and is now adventive. I find one or two new introductions every year, and each has an impact.

Many of these plants have those many rayed bright yellow flowers that the average person only registers as the “pretty dandelions” that a Facebook meme told them to spread.

OK…now let’s talk about pollinator diversion, which scientists tell me over and over is “hard to study” in an experimental process, because that requires eliminating all variables and only comparing one or two bits of information at a time. We need a “scientific method” for studying ecology: the movement of plant and animal populations facing multiple threats within the context of a whole system, because, folks, we are already have a biological stew “out there”.

Those bees, like people (or any animal), feed at an “opportunity cost”. They simply cannot be in two places at once. A bee that is on all those dandelion-like plants we give a “pass” to, CANNOT be on the plants it evolved over 16,000 years to pollinate…and the native plant restorer is left scratching his head wondering why the pollination rate is so low on his native plants. I see this all the time, when I simply compare the pollination rate and seed production of native plant communities close to dirt roads and ATV trails (which are a river of introduced species wherever they are built) to a similar community of native plants well away from roads.

Some introduced plants, like clover and wild carrot produce huge “floral resources” of nectar…a kind of “fast-food joint” where bees can concentrate in large numbers and more efficiently “tank up” on food than on a native plant. The research suggests that the generalist species simply go to where the most flowers are. If they are NOT on the native plants, those plants are not reproducing as fast as the “bee thief” plants, and they quietly disappear in the wild while the new plants spread exponentially. I am seeing this everywhere with hawkweed.

This is why I pull any non-native invasive and/or “naturalized” plant I can lay my hands on. There are so many that there is not enough time in the day. So I pull those non-native plants that are most invasive, and most full of diverted bees, so that the native host plants of some 800 species of moths have the leaves they evolved to eat. The ONLY leaves they can eat in many cases as they evolved to be host plant specific in body chemistry (to overcome the host plant’s chemical defenses) and in specialized mouth parts.

Cumulatively, the “load” of introduced plants will result in increased pollinator diversion. What makes me crazy is when even scientists, who ONLY study bees proclaim how great some introduced plants are…for the bees…because they are missing every other kind of native animal (from moths to ants, beetles, birds, amphibians, and indigenous people) who might rely on that plant for survival.

We simply can’t NOT look at the whole system when making decisions about plants in our gardens. I am not saying we need to strictly grow native plants. But these forces should be carefully considered. Our enjoyment

MB Whitcomb

4/30/2022 09:58:05 am

(final...I hope) We simply can’t NOT look at the whole system when making decisions about plants in our gardens. I am not saying we need to strictly grow native plants. But these forces should be carefully considered. Our enjoyment of gardening dims rapidly when all our effort is needed to defend our native plants (and the HUNDREDS of species they support) from all those “Cortez-like” ground conquerors that are actively attacking our ecology and changing our very soil.

It is exciting that people are beginning to care about the idea of “habitat”. I am so optimistic, that I even hope we can slow down the predicted Anthropocene extinction with our efforts. But Pandora’s box is open…there are so many introduced species, and it will take active human hands and hearts to make solid decisions about which threaten our habitats the most, and a lot of determined individual and group efforts.

Where I live, I imagine we could have indigenous lawn/meadows, ankle deep in drop-dead beautiful hair grasses, wild blueberries, strawberries, mountain cranberry, where the bees buzz, the frogs leap, and the night hawks nest. But those sunny habitats are nearly gone, because that is where humans like to have their roads, lawns and houses. We feel we have to control every bit of it, sadly, to have a lot of species around, we probably still do, but in a different way...we must be active stewards, and that is not work that is easily accomplished with indiscriminate machines...it takes a human brain and fingers to select for native plants.

I am hard pressed to find those meadows where I learned about nature as a kid. The ones I know about become more yellow polka dotted every year. How I wish I could cram all this into a meme.

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3/25/2023 11:24:23 am

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4/11/2023 11:45:11 am

I never considered them to be "wounds" before. My yard is full of weeds. I'll have to have them professionally pulled out.

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6/13/2023 04:05:17 am

I found this thought-provoking blog post on the perspective of not pulling a weed, and it has completely changed my outlook on gardening. The author argues that weeds can have their own beauty and purpose in the ecosystem, challenging the conventional notion of eradicating them. Instead, they advocate for understanding the role of weeds and finding a balance in the garden. This article has opened my eyes to a more holistic approach to gardening, and I'm excited to explore coexistence with nature's wilder elements in my own green space.

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