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Answers to your gardening questions |
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Five-part article series on flower-drying starts here Eight-part article series on vegetable gardening starts here Asian
Lily Beetles Japanese
Beetles An
effective Deer Fence! |
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Weeds in
the lawn tell quite a tale!
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Welcome through Fred’s Garden Gate! Most people, gardeners included, don’t give much thought to weeds. Simply a nuisance. The almost inevitable free-riding bums of the garden, lawn and roadside. A complete waste of space, as our son is often heard to say. There’s more to weeds than meet the casual eye, however. For one, weeds mean big profits for the chemical industry. Just look at the rows and stacks of weed killers in virtually any shop or store that sells anything remotely resembling gardening supplies and equipment. Dyed-in-the-wool composters love weeds! Once gathered, chopped up and converted to rich, dark, nutrient-filled and composted organic matter, weeds end up benefiting the garden soil to which they are returned. Some weeds can even serve as food, and not just for animals. Few New Englanders haven’t at least tried dandelion greens, for example. Purslane, common chickweed and lamb’s quarters are just a few more of the many weeds that have—it seems like forever—been enjoyed at the dinner table. Even avid photographers benefit and profit from stunning and inspiring photos of weeds. But did you know that weeds can actually communicate with knowledgeable gardeners? Yes, and they can tell anyone willing to listen exactly what’s wrong with their lawn and garden soils...if not their gardening practices. The unexplained increase in crabgrass and white clover in the lawn, for example, is a sure sign that the mower blades are set to cut the grass far too short. The ideal (and healthiest) height of cut is between two and a half and three inches from the point where the leaves meet the roots. Plantain growing in abundance in a mowed area like a lawn can only indicate exceptionally low fertility. Such is the case in lawns that are rarely—if ever—fertilized. Here’s a sure sign of problems prevalent in large numbers of lawns here in the Northeast: the two kinds of chickweed (common and mouse-ear) and annual bluegrass nearly shout that the soil is compacted. Compaction us most often caused by heavy foot traffic, and/or snowplow and garden machines rolling back and forth year after year. Annual aeration quickly solves the problem. But who does that? The people in the neighborhood who have the most beautiful, lush, green, healthy, and envied lawn—that’s who! An indicator of constantly-soggy-wet and poorly drained areas of a lawn is prunella. It looks a little like a “wild” version of Ajuga with its rapidly spreading, tight-to-the-ground habit and clusters of blue flowers on slender, five or six inch stems. If seeds are allowed to mature just before mowing, the weed will be everywhere. But the most telling of all—if not the most annoying—are the mosses that seem to be overwhelming grass in a rampant, headlong dash to be the sole occupant and beneficiary of neglected mowed ground. Moss in the lawn is an undeniable indicator of a combination of compaction, low nutrition, poor drainage, “scalping” and serious acidity. Moss will not grow in a lawn that is aerated every spring or fall, limed at least once each season, cut at a reasonable height and fed on a regular spring and fall schedule. Healthy turf will quickly out-compete moss. There are others, of course, but these are the most commonly encountered in poor garden conditions, and the most telling. Now the only task that remains is to get out there and do something about it.
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