I was out working in the yard recently and there it already was popping its head up: ground ivy.

And believe it or not, a remaining snow pile wasn’t but four feet away. Then, a bit later, I took my dog, Rocky, for a walk down the road for our daily check on the beaver habitat and had yet another spotting, but this time it was the seedling leaves of wild mustard.

How can it be that my daffodils have only just begun to flower and these two “charming” weeds already have declared that this land is their land?

Well it’s quite easy if you are either a perennial weed such as the ground ivy or a winter annual (aka wild mustard) to get a jump on spring.

As with our perennial flowers, ground ivy simply dies back and over-winters through its roots and a winter annual weed such as wild mustard will have deposited its seed last fall, germinated, then laid dormant until the ground warmed this spring.

Just who are these wild and crazy weeds and what can we as gardeners do to reclaim our turf?

Ground ivy is so notorious it must utilize multiple aliases: Creeping Charlie, Creeping Jennie, Gill-over-the-Ground, Alehoof, Cat’s Foot, Turnhoof, Run-away-robin, Ground Joy, Haymaids and Hedgemaids, just to name a few. But regardless of what you call it, the telltale square stem gives us probably more information than we need — square stems signify membership in the invasive mint family.

Glechoma hederacea, aka ground ivy, makes invading our yards its life’s mission. Right now its decorative, roundish scalloped leaves are rather tiny and burgundy in color, nothing like the vibrant green, nickel-sized leaves they morph into. Once in full green attire, brilliant violet blue flowers dot the rambling stems and if you can put aside its negative attributes, the blossoms and the minty fragrance it emits when stepped on are rather pleasant.

Chances are many of you have tugged this weed from your garden and perhaps not realized it; if you wiggle your finger under any part of its stem and pull upward a long trail of vine will uproot.

Ground ivy can root into the soil at each leaf node. Thus when you try to eradicate it, if you leave a section, it simply begins life anew. Manual control is your best bet when it tests your patience in your flower and landscape beds. For lawns, a chemical herbicide called 2, 4-D or a more organic control utilizing the old household product Twenty Mule Team Borax has been found very effective.

Remember, since this is a perennial weed, the most opportune time to eradicate is in fall when the plant is beginning to revert into its dormant state.

Food reserves are being rerouted to the root zone for winter storage, and application at this time will allow the control to piggyback a ride down to the roots for a complete kill.

Weed controls applied during active growth for the most part offer a top growth die back only, allowing the roots to survive and regenerate within a few weeks time.

Although introduced into the United States by European settlers as a ground cover and considered by many to be a weed, its membership in the mint family has garnered it a useful herb with multiple medicinal uses.

As for its winter annual counterpart, wild mustard is fast becoming a nuisance. Chances are if you’ve walked back roads or trekked through an open field you’ve run into this gem. Unlike ground ivy, there have been no positive attributes discovered for this plant.

Often found growing in pastures, the entire plant is poisonous and livestock that feed heavily on it over a period of time suffer from intestinal and oral irritations that have resulted in further illnesses.

Brassica kaber as it is known in the botanical world can grow upwards of three feet and sport lemon yellow, four-petaled flowers nearly all summer long. The foliage is a lackluster greenish-blue color that penetrates the unsuspecting, non-gloved hand with tiny prickles.

One plant alone can produce thousands of seeds so it’s easy to see how this weed of weeds has gotten its reputation for invasiveness. The best offense is to hand pull plants as soon as they are noticed, hopefully before they flower and set seed. Another cultural control is to lay heavy black plastic over infested garden areas, leaving it for four to six weeks; the heat produced under the plastic will terminate emerging plants.

Remember since it is an annual of sorts, the parent plant lives only one season, by curtailing the life of the parent, gardeners can control the number of seeds sown for fall germination.

An alternate to plastic is chemical control with either Glyphosphate (found in Round-up) or 2, 4 -D (found in Weed-Be Gon). Read label directions thoroughly as Glyphosphate is a nonselective herbicide, meaning it will kill both grass and broadleaf weeds; 2, 4-D is a selective, broadleaf weed control. Both have application precautions.

Ahh, the beauty of spring — weeds and all!

source : www.citizen.com By NANCY O’DONNELL