[Selkie]

i spent most of the afternoon weeding under my new escallonia hedge (only planted in the spring but not doing too badly);

am wondering what are the worst weeds any/all of you lot have to fight in your gardens/allotments?

mine are creeping buttercup ( :evil: i hate this with a vengence)
japanese knotweed (though we are getting on top of this - only taken us nearly three years :evil: )

i'm adding nettles to that list - i just got stung by some through my jeans ( :twisted: mutant kerry nettles) and on my bare back --- and it hurts!

[Aunt Sally]

mares-tail, couch grass, bindweed, on my allotment

I think the mares-tail is the hardest to get rid of as the roots go so far down.  I keep digging roots out, and one lottie neighbour said "never let it see a Sunday"  so it's hoe, hoe, hoe  

[WG.]

i just got stung by some ... on my bare back

How are you going to explain that one to Peter when he gets home from work!    

[Trillium]

Thankfully we don't get knotweed over here. But bindweed is the bane of my existence; no matter how much root I carefully dig out, it's back again! I'll take couch any day over bindweed  :twisted:

[Selkie]

we have bindweed too, but there doesn't seem to be THAT much of it at least, just in one of the flowerbeds

ooh i'm glad we don't have mares' tail - one of my mum's neighbours has that coming through the tarmac on their drive, it's invincible!

we've got on top of the knotweed by constantly pulling out every new shoot, though like the mares' tail if you turn your back on it it's taken over again.

but at least we don't live next door - their whole back garden (and it's not a small garden) is FULL of knotweed, before our neighbour bought the house it was like a jungle there. he's grassed over the whole garden  :roll:  and keeps the knotweed under vague control by mowing it down.

[milkman]

just have annual weeds generally in the garden so they are perfect compost fodder.

at the lottie it's a different story - this year the creeping buttercups have come out on top, having done exceedingly well with the wet summer.  

 :twisted: but I am planning my revenge - one of these days the wheelie bins that have been sat in my garage waiting to be put to good use will be transported down the lottie, have a hole drilled in the base, set up on a couple of bricks with a tray underneath to catch any liquid feed, then filled with armfuls upon armfuls of creeping buttercups interspersed with the occasional bindweed root, to be killed off and rotted down before being added to the main compost bin.

glad I don't have japanese knotweed or marestail otherwise I might have to think my organic strategy...

[Selkie]

don't know about aunt sally's mares' tail but we've been tackling the knotweed organically - by just picking any shoots we find or pulling out the roots (which are massive) whenever they break the surface.

i guess sucessive dosings of nasty weedkiller would do the trick but it isn't necessary when my husband has the time to do it by hand (he LOVES weeding it out)

like you way of dealing with the creeping buttercups; they drive me demented - you think you've got them all up and then a couple of days later there are new plants again :evil:

[mushroom]

worst on my allotment is the wild bramble/blackberry. Thorny as hell and well established, it sounds like some people I know. I will be spending most of my allotment time this winter getting rid of this.

[Selkie]

oooh i'm starting to think our weeds here aren't that bad after all!

we've got two tiny patches of brambles in the garden but nothing compared to that :shock:

hope i'm not 'thorny as hell' :cry:

[mushroom]

hope i'm not 'thorny as hell' :cry:

I'm not referring to anyone here - this is where I come to relax . I'm referring to my cow-orkers.

[Cynara]

I can cope with the buttercups, but the worst weed here is ....Pearlwort.  Individually it's very tiny, but left to its own devices it forms a solid mat over any exposed soil. You can't pull it out, just dig it in or skim the whole lot off with a spade. Then there's those things they tell you to plant for the wildlife, like teasels for the goldfinches and bugloss for the bees. Turn your back for a minute and you've got the  :evil: spiky b*gg*rs  everywhere.

[Selkie]

is pearlwort 'mind your own business' or am i thinking about something else? i don't mind 'mind your own business' ( ) so much since i found that the hens will eat it

and i love teasels

[splodger]

creeping buttercup is my current worst one - as it's gone mad this year

in my garden - cinquefoil and horse tail - are the main problem - i've sorted everything else out - just about

[Trillium]

Cripes, Mushroom, I can't see a thing for the jungle. What IS that stuff?

[mushroom]

Cripes, Mushroom, I can't see a thing for the jungle. What IS that stuff?

That's blackberry (otherwise known as bramble). At its tallest point, it's about 9 feet high. It's at the southern end of my plot, which is about 80ft long. It encroaches 10 to 15 feet into it. Its stems are covered in thorns, as large as but at a higher density than you'd find on a rose bush. I wear a really thick very heavy cotton rugby shirt to get in amongst the stems and cut them, otherwise me arms would be cut to ribbons.

Imagine living, breathing, and growing barbed wire, and you're there. on the plus side it's relatively easy to cut, on the minus, there's so much of it (20ft across x 15ft in), then there's the roots to deal with. I'm actually looking forward to clearing it, with brute force and ignorance