Popping up all by themselves

If you want to bring out the inner child in a gardener, let them discover a pretty flower in their garden which they know they haven't planted themselves. 

They'll never see it and think "weed" ... they'll always think "I'm blessed, a pretty flower has chosen my garden to grow in". 

For a while they might entertain fantasies that it's a rarity, that they'll be visited by botanists wanting to see it ... but they keep these daydreams to themselves mostly.

Later on they'll ask a spoilsport of a gardening friend what their beautiful visitor is, and it's then they'll discover that their magical find is, in fact, a notorious spreading weed which needs to be eradicated ASAP.

I am such a spoilsport, so be prepared for some disappointing news if you ask me about that delightful new mystery visitor to your little slice of heaven.

It's happened this week, it being spring and all, so here's just one example. 

I can't be 100 percent certain, but I reckon this pinky person poking through this Sydney lawn is called a cape tulip, Moraea miniata. Or at least that's what the government's weed identification website told me. It's the first place I visit when trying to identify a plant a friend sends to me. Nice flower, but it's a weed.

On the other hand, when I am completely out of guesses about identifying a mystery plant, I contact one of my old horticulturist workmates from gardening magazine days. See the next photo below. It had me stumped, because I couldn't find it on any weed listing ... and that's because it wasn't a weed.

Sarah, a friend (and former workmate) who's now living in the Central West region of NSW, sent me a photo of this shrub with the unusual orangey-brown flowers. I didn't have a clue, and so I sent it on to Elizabeth, an expert horticulturist. She got back to me via email, writing: "Now to that brown flowering plant. I first encountered this back in 2013 in a “dry garden” in Wellington NSW. It is Salvia africana-lutea; it’s really interesting, unusual and very very tough!"

So, not all mystery plants are weeds, but I'd still bet that the one you have discovered popping up all by itself in your backyard garden this spring is, in fact, I regret to inform you, bad luck old friend ... a weed.

However, I'd hate to conclude my blog posting on such a negative note, and so I hereby confess to having introduced a wide array of very persistent flowering weeds into my own garden, which may well have wandered into neighbouring gardens somehow and made my neighbours wonder where their pretty visitor came from.  

All that aside, it's a pleasure to see my weedy beauties popping up here every year, all by themselves, from seed dropped by last year's flowers. Here's some favourites:

I hereby declare Love-in-a-Mist my favourite weed.

Johnny jump ups (Heartsease) have been here since we planted them 28 years ago.

Same with the primulas, they always pop up here every year.

Then again, some weeds in our garden look like weeds, behave like weeds, choke other plants like the worst weeds do, they cannot be eradicated no matter what I try ... and I detest them ... and then they pop up with a pretty flower that I can't resist admiring, such as this vivid blue tradescantia bloom. Doesn't make me like tradescantia the garden thug one bit ... I just think of it now as a bully with piercing blue eyes.

The 10-Year Rewind – Part 13 – Understanding Onion Weed

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 13 is this one — Understanding Onion Weed — from October 2008. (You might imagine that as a result of my understanding of onion weed that I no longer have any problems with it. No, sorry, that is not the case at all ...)

Pulled out the mother of all onion weed plants this morning, and thought it demonstrated perfectly why onion weed can never be defeated! But I have had some mild success against the stuff – no victories, mind you – just the kind of successes where I can grow other things without onion weed ruining everything. My garden still has onion weed, and always will.

Viewed close up, it's obvious why onion weed always bounces back after you've dug it out of the ground. With all those little bulblets just waiting to drop off, no matter how careful you are about digging out the main bulb you'll leave behind at least one bulblet, if not a dozen or more.

This time I dug out a big clump of soil, then washed it to collect as many bulblets as possible, but I'm not kidding myself that this method means no more onion weed. 

As well as dropping bulblets when you pull it out of the ground, onion weed has a 'slow-release' way of sprouting its bulblets, too, that makes it a weed you just have to admire for its adaptation and 'survivor' skills.

Imagine you have lots of onion weed bulbs underground in a garden bed. At any given moment, only a fraction of the bulbs will sprout and shows grassy leaves above-ground. The rest stay put underground, doing nothing for the meantime. They'll wait till another time a few days, weeks or even months later, to sprout. So, even if you eradicate all the onion weed you can see, more will come up later from the 'sleeping' bulbs.

Herbicides such as Roundup can kill onion weed, but this stuff isn't remotely organic and it's also easy to spill a deadly drop of it on a treasured nearby plant while you're trying to apply it to the onion weed. And besides, the Roundup only kills the onion weed above ground. All the 'sleeping' bulbs underground will come up later on, anyway.

Black plastic covering the soil is nasty even if it's crudely effective. I think it's nasty because it 'cooks' every living thing under it, especially during summer. Healthy soils are meant to be full of air, to help plant roots breathe. Plastic smothers the soil and deprives it of air. It also heats the soil and can kill worms and lots of other beneficial micro-organisms, especially on a hot summer's day here in Sydney. And it's not porous, so it prevents moisture getting down into the soil, too, turning the soil bone dry. To my mind, covering soil with black plastic is bad all-round, and much worse than herbicide as a weed control. 

I just use good old garden mulch (in my case sugar cane mulch), and pull out the onion weeds as I see them. Instead of using a two-pronged hand garden fork to pull out onion weed, wherever possible I just dig up a whole clump of soil around the weed, then fish out the weed and as many bulblets as possible, as per my photos at the top of this blog. 

Sometimes this method isn't possible when weeds and wanted plants are all crowded in together. Sometimes I just break the onion weed leaves off at ground level, just to tidy up the look of the area.

In the end the main thing is to accept that you'll never get rid of onion weed completely. The best you can manage is to give it a hard time whenever the opportunity presents itself. But deep down, I don't hate this plant. I almost admire it sometimes, but not quite.

How to spot a weed

Spotted a weed this morning, so as a public service, here's how to spot a weed ...

Q: Did you plant it there?

A: No.

Answer: It's a weed!



Supplementary question for hopeless romantics

Q: What are the odds it is not a weed and in fact a rare and special plant which has chosen your garden to grow in, because you, too, are rare and special?

A: One in about, roughly ... oh, let me see ... a billion, or thereabouts.


Sorry to be a weekend party pooper, but if you're looking for something to do in your garden this weekend, pull out all (or at least lots) of the weeds you find.

The weeds are winning

To misquote Neil Young somewhat, weeds never sleep. We all know that, and at the end of this cool, wet winter in Sydney, the garden weeds have never been happier. They have been having a wonderfully invasive season. Here in Pammy and Jamie Land, it's the usual suspects: the oxalis, chickweed and onion weed in particular, plus a bunch of other little rotters whose names I still don't know.

As if that is not enough punishment for virtuous artists and gardeners, the real kicker is that some of our beloved own plants have decided to go over to the other side — the dark side — and become weeds. Pictured below is Exhibit A: the chervil that decided to plant itself in our Thai lime pot.

The parent patch of chervil which spawned this tropical runaway (pictured below) is about 20 feet (6 metres) distant. It truly beats me how an errant chervil seed made its way down here and UP(!) into the pot but it's obviously happy and healthy, taking advantage of my generous citrus feeding and watering policies, not to mention the cool, green shade provided by the Thai lime tree. 

This little episode starts to make me wonder if this chervil is normal, old-fashioned chervil. Could it be some lab monster? What makes me think this warped, twisted way is the fact that all this thriving chervil didn't come into the world via a packet of seeds. No, this stuff entered our garden via Woolies supermarket, where I bought a simple punnet of "healthy sprouts" that you're meant to snip into your marvellously healthy salad. Here's a link to that story.

Enough paranoia, let's move on to exhibit B: the maidenhair fern that has gone punk.

Compared to the runaway chervil in the lime tree pot, which at least makes gardening sense in that it chose a nice spot to become a weed, this maidenhair fern-ette has gone the full punk rocker and aspires to be a pathway weed growing out of a crack in the concrete. Call me conservative if you like, but this is just not right!

To set the scene, here's our dreary little side path where the garbage bins live, with the maidenhair "weed" in the foreground and some evil asthma weed (Pellitory) in the background, doing its wheezy worst. 

A full 15 feet (about 4.5 metres) away is the none-too-healthy but still alive parent plant, in its garden bed under the cool shade of one of our murrayas. Now I suspect some of you might think this unhealthy adult is the perfectly appropriate, dishevelled parent of a punk weed, but it is the end of winter, the cold winter winds rushing up our side path can be ferocious, and in another month or two this fern should bounce back to better health once the weather warms up.

While I am trying to confect a little outrage here at the thought that some of my garden lovelies want to become weeds, my real feeling is yet another burst of "ain't nature wonderful?"

Should it turn out at the end of my existence that I get the most almighty surprise and end up at a bunch of pearly gates, my name ticked off the guest list and allowed to enter, I will be making a bee-line for the Head Gardener up there in heaven. While there are so many questions I will have to ask (he/she must get sick of old gardeners bothering them) I will definitely be wanting an explanation of how maidenhair ferns turn into punk pathway weeds. Down here on Earth, I haven't got a clue how it happens.

Weedy wonderland

If they ever discover life on Mars, I would not be at all surprised if it turns out to be onion weed. That stuff is indestructible. However, I am not waking up my slumbering gardening blog to moan about onion weed. No, I have a completely different weed to moan about. 

MAJOR EDIT: See the comments below, as it seems I have mis-identified this weed based on a mistake in a book that I relied on when I originally wrote this post in 2016. In my editing I am deleting quite a bit of content, but I do hope the new identification is useful to you. Thanks to Helensburgh Landcare for setting me straight.

Its common name is Phyllanthus tenellus. Here's a few photos of the evil weed in action.

This second snap is more like it. You rarely see one of these things on its own. Usually they come up in numbers, like this.

Fortunately, when small they are very easy to pull out of the ground. That isn't the problem — it's just the sheer numbers of them, everywhere.

Weedling or seedling?

When they're little, all children are adorably cute, but it's a sad fact they don't all stay that way, especially once the hormones kick in. That's what's happening in my backyard nursery at the moment. Right now there are lots and lots of baby plants coming up, some from seed I have sown, but many others are just horrible little weedlings. So how do you tell the difference between a weedling and a seedling? You just wait and let them grow up a bit more.

This typical baby seedling could be one of many thousands of
species, but as far as this patch of ground is concerned, it's probably
either a chickweed baby or a parsley baby. But it's too early to tell...

With its second set of little crinkly leaves appearing, this guy is
showing distinct signs of curly parsleyness. It can stay!

Uh…ohhh. Once this bub has sprouted its second rung of leaves
it has revealed itself to be the start of a smothering, spreading
chickweed, the bane of this garden bed's existence. It cannot stay!

If you are wondering "what is chickweed?" this is the stuff.
Spreads like a rumour, thrives on neglect and loves wet weather
(when the gardener is inside reading books). I'll never get
rid of chickweed, all I can do is limit its spread by hand-weeding.

The reason for this blog posting is simply that I have been trying to establish some little green herby borders here and there by spreading seed generously in a line and waiting for them to come up. It sounds like a nice idea, and it will look good in a few weeks from now, but sowing seed in a line along bare ground just invites weedy seeds to set up shop as well. While there's not a lot to do with these herby borders after you sow the seeds, apart from some watering, the main job is weeding: keeping the uninvited intruders down in numbers so the 'wanted' herbs can get established. The parsley border is in front of what should soon turn into Pammy's flowering poppy patch. 

This is my chervil border, which is coming
along nicely in a line in front of our gardenias.

I love chervil, both in the garden and in the
kitchen. It can be a bit weedy if it likes your
garden's soil and climate, and it does pop up
here and there, but it's always so pretty.

The unseasonably warm weather we had in May
ruined my first crop of coriander, which bolted to
seed in the heat. This second crop, a mini border
in front of a vegie patch with shallots and lettuce
all doing well, is loving the cooler, wetter winter
weather and should last until spring.

Last night I was talking with some good friends who have just had their front and rear gardens professionally designed and planted, and they look great already. However, the dreaded onion weed is coming back up already, marring the effect of their beautiful new plantings. Talking with them about controlling onion weed (a never-ending task, in my opinion) reminded me how much time I spend in the garden just pulling weeds. Hardly exciting work, but if you take on a garden, you need to embrace the seemingly dreary work of weeding at the same time.

I say "seemingly" because I view weeding as "thinking time". There's something about simple drudgery, like washing up or weeding, that I actually like doing. While my hands are busy doing a simple task, I find I often think of story ideas, blog posting ideas, and plan out my days and weeks ahead. Maybe I'm a bit odd, but I really don't mind weeding at all. As long as there's not too much of it, that is...

Weedling or seedling?

All I have to show for a few hours of effort in the garden today is a thoroughly soiled pair of gardening jeans, especially around the knees. Weeding, the never-ending story.

In the middle of one patch of ground, I spotted this little fella coming up. "Are you a weedling or a seedling?" I wondered.

This being the spot where I sowed Florence Fennel seeds for
this first time about 10 days ago, there was every likelihood
this was a Florence Fennel seedling. But how very helpful of
the little tacker to come up with his distinctive Florence Fennel
seed attached. Coming out with its hands up..."Don't shoot!"

At this so intensely weedy time of year there are weedlings and seedlings coming up everywhere, and with crops that I've never grown before I always have that moment of hesitation when I think "Is that you?" upon spotting growth where I have planted seeds. 

Never ending story

Spring might be a time when everything I want to see growing quickly is belting along as hoped for, but the sad fact is that all the plants which I'd be delighted to see keeling over are some of the healthiest, most vigorous things out there. They're the weeds, the rotten things.

I'm an early riser, and like to spend a bit of time every morning checking on the garden, but that pleasant little ramble often turns into me pulling out more weeds. It's a never-ending chore, and while I hate the weeds in one way I do have a grudging admiration for their tenacity and survival smarts. 

This isn't a new photo, but as it's the Mother of All
Onion Weeds ever dug up from my garden, I'll use it
again, as it shows what we're up against. Not just one
weed but Mum and a few dozen kiddies.

Dig Mum out of the ground and dozens of bulblets
quickly jesttison from the Mother Ship, staying behind
in the soil, ready to start up another colony. 

Now, the truly despicable thing about onion weed is that the bulbs don't all sprout at once. If, for example, there are 100 bulbs in a given patch of soil, you won't see all 100 come up at once. Instead, they come up in dribs and drabs over all four seasons. What a sneaky trick!

I'm not a fan of using weedkillers such as glyphosate sprays (Zero, Roundup) in any food-producing garden bed, so I still soldier on digging out onion weed. When I spot a plant I dig deep, taking up not just the weed and its bulb, but a good-sized clump of soil around it. It's not a perfect method and a few do come back up, but not so energetically as before. When digging over all the different garden beds for this recent revamp, dozens and dozens and dozens of onion weed civilisations fell... and yet they're still coming back now, if not as strong as before. As I said, never ending story.

The other major pest here is oxalis, both
the type with bulbs at the base...

...and the multi-branching types with
the super-long taproots. Both are truly
despicable weeds which have a
permanent lease over my garden. 

I think I am actually slowly breeding up a new and nastier uber-oxalis over time. I've noticed that the light green oxalis pictured here, which is fairly easy to see, is becoming outnumbered by a darker-leaved type which is much harder to see. I must be leaving that dark-leaved one behind more often as I weed my way around the place. Serves me right, I should just let this easy-to-spot light green oxalis take over the garden and count myself lucky!

I really could turn my garden into a weed display village in fact, despite my diligence with the weeding fork every morning. Yes, we also have some superb little displays of tradescantia (wandering jew), pellitory (asthma weed), dandelions, chick weed clusters, plus several other little low-growing horrors which colonise cracks in paving and spread from there. Don't know all their names, unfortunately.

All I can do is pull 'em out when I see them, and keep on pulling them out. It's a never-ending story.

Breakfast bowl

I'm sometimes accused of being a bit of a hopeless romantic, so let me appall you with this miserable idea: if a plant pops up in your garden and you don't know what it is, take it from me, there's a 99% chance it's a weed.

Note there's a loophole here, the bit about "you don't know what it is". When a plant pops up in your garden without you planting it – and you do know what it is – it's probably something self-seeded from an existing plant, or a survivor from your compost heap, like this delicious strawberry patch.

This morning's harvest of strawbs will soon be the star
of a healthy breakfast, but you do have to do a tiny
bit of work for your sweet reward. Some strawberries are
brazen crimson show-offs that are easy to see, but a lot of
them lurk under the foliage, and so a bit of peek-a-boo
work is needed to provide a full breakfast.

Disgraceful behaviour

Lots of gardeners have one or more little patches in their garden which they 'tut-tut' about as being a bit of a disgrace, something they plan to attend to, where unruly plants have taken over and a bit more order is well overdue. I have one of those, right underneath my lime tree, and as soon as this summer heatwave is over I might even do something about it, probably, perhaps. But right now even the weeds are looking good there, so I'll just blog about them, instead of doing any real work.

Pretty blue, the tradescantia flowers, aren't they? A bright blue that lasts one day. This is the ultimate weed. If just one molecule of tradescantia remains in the ground after weeding the area, it will be back. But it's not the main occupant of my field of disgrace and neglect.

Nor is it this lonely, last survivor of the convolvulus plant that enjoyed just one good spring here two years ago. It's just a remnant now, merely part of the problem, without being the problem.

This is the problem, and it's a native plant. Viola hederacea, the Australian native violet. This is every bit as tenacious and ineradicable as tradescantia, yet hardly anyone describes it as a weed (yet!). I've tried to be rid of it several times, but it always comes back. All it needs is one survivor from a bit of neglectful weeding and it's in with a chance, especially if I get busy at work, go on holidays or merely concentrate on other parts of the garden for too long.

The spread of native violets is green and healthy and lovely and lush, rising not much higher than the book my official garden librarian gnome, Mitchell, is trying to read. Its little white and bluey-purpley flowers are out in bloom almost year-round, too. So why get rid of such a great groundcover? It never knows when or where to stop. It's a compulsive invader, quite a badly behaved garden neighbour in fact. However, for the meantime it's too hot to even think about doing much work in the garden, so I've planted some complementary blues to create the illusion that this disgraceful patch of blue is all part of some intentional design.

Across the pathway, blue alyssum loves the heat and humidity.

A few feet away, so does the blue salvia, soaking up the summer sun.

And in pots nearby, the pinky-blue chive flowers participate in the charade.

It's all a hoax, I'm afraid. One of these days, as soon as the weather cools, I will lift once more my Quixotic 'garden weeder' equipment and tilt once more at these weedy blue windmills. Not sure how much success I'll have, but until this scorching summer is over, the uneasy truce continues.