We all do it. Sometimes we do it in other people’s gardens and we really shouldn’t. I mean the random weeding as you walk round the garden, deep in conversation with a friend. Suddenly distracted by the sight of a bad plant in the wrong place we interrupt the conversation and leap into a flower bed to heave it out. Or sometimes, more discreetly, we just bend and gently remove the weed.
This is a specially good one for casual weeding – it usually comes up easily, root and all…
And then what? You don’t want to spend the rest of the walk clutching a wilting weed. Especially since that will inhibit your attempts to remove any other ones. And ideally you have a glass in the other hand.
Well, what is a hedge for? There’s almost always room underneath for the odd weed, given a bit of kicking and shoving to tidy it up. A shrub is good for this too. I remember a time when Charles used to tell me off for shoving weeds under hedges and shrubs. I notice that he does it too these days. It’s good feed for the hedge, of course, a bit of dead plant.
Just needs a bit more shoving..(spot the weed!)
A little distraction helps, of course – you hope everyone will look to the left, just in case you left a bit poking out..
Persicaria campanulata ‘alba’ on the left
Sometimes the shrubs are large enough and loose enough for you to just chuck:
Charles is happy to do that too, these days….
Though you need to chuck carefully – sometimes this just leaves a weed dangling rather conspicuously in the shrub.
But it’s better than being so proud of what you got out that you leave it on the path, expecting applause.
A discarded bramble….
Another answer is to throw it over a fence, into a neighbouring field, to generously feed the sheep:
There was a time when I pursued a rather good answer to this problem: weeding baskets, scattered strategically around the garden, waiting to have weeds dropped in.
One of my weeding baskets, by kind permission of Charles’s photo library, Gap Photos
As you can see they tended to get rather full. Sadly, they also used to get wet, and stay wet with sodden weeds, so they rotted. Painting wicker was a bit of a pain, and the baskets quite expensive, so this Great Idea fell into disuse. Plastic tubs work quite well though –
Looks terribly pleased with himself, don’t he?
And why would you not do some casual weeding in a friend’s garden? Because it’s like the proverbial running the finger along the mantelpiece – it’s being critical of someone’s house – or in this case garden – keeping,
And also because you cannot be sure you share the same view of what a weed is.
Ground elder has a flower very like Ammi majus, recently a terribly fashionable annual. Ground elder flowers last better in water, I am told.
Not everyone has a ground elder bed, whereas I’m very fond of mine.
But, on the other hand, I have offered visitors bags to put this in, to take away with them:
Cleavers, sticky willy, goose grass = galium aparine
Helpful people have filled bags for me, but have never taken them away with them.
And people have been known to cultivate bindweed. It is quite pretty….
Just now, this is one of our favourite parts of the garden, and you might say that it’s full of weed…. it’s simply ancient pasture (over 200 years unploughed, I believe) with extras planted in somewhat randomly.
Which are weeds, then?
I love it! Don’t you?
Yes, I love the ungroomed pasture! We had a misunderstanding one year when DH “helped” me by weeding out all the Flower of an Hour from the butterfly garden. They weren’t blooming yet, and do look “weedy” when not flowering, so I couldn’t be too mad. But we “reviewed” that although some people do consider them weeds, I view them as a desireable oddity. The Victorians loved and cultivated them, and since we’re in a Victorian house, I thought it appropriate to have a few around. They did come back the next year, and haven’t become invasive, appearing in a sparse area in front of the garden. So yes, a weed truly is in the eye of the beholder!
O, that took me on a hunt, wondering what this plant was that I’m missing out on. Sounds very promising. You may perhaps be surprised that I found “hibiscus trionum” is ‘rarely found’ – in the UK.
“Though you need to chuck carefully – sometimes this just leaves a weed dangling rather conspicuously in the shrub.” LOL – yes! I had beheaded a sunflower to get at the seeds, but left it’s trunk behind as support for a gangly tomato. Next row over, I start pulling crabgrass and bindweed from around another tomato, chucking the offenders into the fallow row beyond. Or so I thought. Stood to ease my aching back and saw a very curious monster – the sunflower trunk, covered in grass and vines. Apparently my aim is very consistent when I’m not watching where I throw!
That’s called ‘art’ !
Hi. love your writing but must tell you that I have been told, maybe once or maybe twice, that it isn’t nice to pick someone else’s juicy weed. They want to do it themselves even if you spotted it first.
Has this ever happened to you?
You mean some people LIKE weeding and feel deprived if you pinch them????!!!!!
Yesterday I went out to water a bit because it was 102* and very humid. well, forget the humidity, it was hot. but then I saw that things needed deadheading and then I had to pick weeds and realized I didn’t have anything with me to gather them. I kept finding weeds that we not there two days ago and because it was so hot, I left little piles everywhere and under shrubs. Within 45 minutes, I was back into the house, sans weeds, all left in little piles.
If you were lucky that heat would shrivel them all up into total insignificance. As for under shrub ones – join the club!
A club indeed.
I toss pulled weeds on the lawn. They dry up there and when I mow the lawn they’re chopped up and scattered around to become fertilizer (eventually). If there are weed seeds that sprout, routine mowing eradicates the sprouts. Also make it a point to toss pulled garlic and chives that have become weedy. Chopping them up with the lawn tractor spreads their scent around … something the critters don’t like, which helps somewhat to keep them out of the garden.
The chuck on the lawn does work as long as a mow is reasonably imminent, but had never thought of clearing the garden of critters with pong: doesn’t that send human beings off too???
In Egypt, I saw guys throwing weeds, etc. on the road and driving over them – instant compost. Sometimes I do that in my driveway now.
Satisfying way of squishing them….
Sometimes I throw the weeds into a neighbor’s yard as that is where they came from in the first place.
I like your style! Still laughing!!!!!!
Nice! That way, I could see some coming back here…….
My goodness, yes. I just realized I do this a little bit too! She’ll never notice…
I am a rambling weeder. I can’t for the life of me go from one end of the garden to the other. I weed a little here, a little there. I bounce around like a pinball. The pulled weeds get tucked under other plants, unless it’s loaded with ripe seeds. (My mother would have been horrified with such sloth) I love cleavers, but despise bindweed. It doesn’t pull completely, as you know, and the tiny little root pieces always come roaring back.
Heard of mulberry weed (Fatoua villosa)? It appeared here 20 years ago, or so, and is an annual monster. Too late for a fatwa. A furtive little fucker. It can grow 18″ or hide from me, sprawling low on the ground. Dull tiny chartreuse blooms set seed over the weekend—or so it seems.
Charles looks like such a rare-breed happy weeder. Lucky for you!
You love cleavers????? Time you came for a visit!!! Bindweed has to give up eventually. I tell myself……
I looked up Fatoua, and decided you can keep it. And do not be deceived by Charles-the-Weeder. That is not a reliable activity of his. But he likes to pose for a photo.
I too am a rambling weeder. Especially when I’m not really weeding. (no bucket or tools in hand), just perusing the garden. Then I have handfuls I carry back to the trash. Repeatedly. Not very efficient, but hey, I’m getting my steps in.
Amen to the monstrousness of mulberry weed Allen. And damn it hides so cleverly within so many other plants. Furtive is a great adjective – as are your others…. 🙂 – MW
I love your witty writing. Charles is really cute, by the way.
I am grateful that a neighbor allows us to pile weeds in her wasteland blackberry area. (I put really invasive ones like bindweed in the wheelie bin.) I usually have two or three wheelbarrows sitting around and tend to hold the weeds till I reach a wheelbarrow. I also put oyster baskets (orange plastic baskets) in the garden sometimes to put weeds in and eventually wheelbarrow them away, by which time they are usually a sodden heavy mess.
Hi Skyler! You’re right about Charles, he was a good find.
Orange plastic baskets sound amazing – I’m sure our visitors would love those and fill them up for us……
You made me laugh! Our garden’s on the edge of a hill and, like medieval peasants, we just throw it over the hillside! There’s probably twenty years worth of decomposing Christmas trees down there as well. Après moi….
How do you feel about friends weeding your plot during a garden walk thru — it drives me crazy! Personally, I think the polite thing to do is not to see them. xxx
You must have a good chuck, to get the stuff down the hillside, especially the size of Christmas Trees. You could turn it into a competitive sport?
It is polite not to see the weeds: or did you mean not to see the friends who insist on picking them???
Hmmmm, hadn’t thought about that, though I do tend to linger on the patio while one of my worst offending friends pokes his way about my garden — ignorance is certainly bliss.
That would work!
I agree with your comment about unspoken criticism when you pull a weed,but what is far worse is pointing out the offender; I’d missed a bindweed which was unreachable during the growing season,but which was tolerable until a ‘friend ‘ said,you missed one…there ended a happy visit!
That was a time to claim you were growing it for it’s delightful flowers. It is true that people have tried, unsuccessfully, to grow bindweed as an ornamental, over arches.
Do you have nutsedge in the UK? I only know of one gardener that claimed she no longer had to deal with it after years of tangling with it. She moved away. If you have it in your garden you just shrug and deal with it.
I think that may be Carex pendula, in which case we do have it. I have tried to grow it as an ornamental…….
I tend to throw mine onto the concrete path or patio to wither and die. Or at least, that’s what I used to do. Most things – especially the tradescantia and fuzzy mint – go to feed the chooks these days, although I have to be careful about things like staggerweed.
But then, no one is visiting my house for the pleasure of looking at my distinctly under-construction garden, let alone paying for the privilege.
y….e…s.. The paying visitors are a consideration. Along with complaining husbands. I can get away with growing weeds on purpose, but perhaps not decorating the garden with their corpses.
Corpses could be buried in a compost pile but that would be a bit of work. Best not to create them at all.
Do you ever have weeds “coming back” after you’ve pulled and stuffed them somewhere? Sometimes if I leave them and the conditions are right, those lousy things re-root and start again!!! I try to break them up before stuffing the compost pile. It’s endless.
I’ve not had weeds coming back, I’m glad to say. Sounds nightmarish!
I usually leave piles of pulled weeds on brick paths, paver patios or concrete sidewalks/driveways to fry to their deaths for their unwanted trespassing if I do not have a vessel with me. There is one spot where I occasionally make a pile for the offenders which smothers other offenders but I do pick up and remove within a week as longer than that especially if it rains picking it up is gross. I do not routinely cast pulled weeds on soil as there are many that won’t die and will grow with half a chance – bindweed, creeping charlie, stiltgrass my most hated trespassers!
I’ve not had much regrowth problem that I’m aware of. That possibly shows better weeding – you’re definitely getting the roots up!
Just grabbed the photo of your fence and sent to to my husband with “when the fence disintegrates, THIS is how we’re replacing it.” He is the midst of greenhouse-hell, so he was not amused. I’m still doing it. Wonderful post Anne – I can relate to everything. My hedges hide a multitude of sins and sinners. – MW
O, that fence solved a multitude of problems – he’ll thank you yet!
I get cheap large baskets from a Thrift Shop and put them in semi hidden spots around the yard and garden- very handy for pulled weeds and the drain well if it rains
Sounds good….
I can’t imagine tossing weeds onto the lawn or onto hard paving, as several of your respondents have suggested… wouldn’t it be just as easy to put them into a trug as they’re pulled and then into a wheelbarrow to be taken to the back of the property? I have several black plastic 15 gallon plant pots sited around the garden for the collection of the “casual weed”… they are unobtrusive and because of the drainage holes, never collect water. Black things disappear in the garden with a little clever placement!
Your plant pots sound useful. And carrying a trug round to a wheelbarrow rounds helpful too, but it’s not quite how I approach a casual stroll round the garden. But then I also never have a pair of secateurs in my pocket and have often regretted that lack of foresight…….Some of us are just more on top of things than others, I think.
I’ve taken to planting weeds in my little garden, persicaria maculata, centaurea nigra, pilosella aurantiaca, and more, which I haven’t yet identified. I just thought, this space is temporarily mine to inhabit, and there are no rules that I have to follow, my mistakes will be my mistakes ! Hurrah freedom !
A man of taste….. Xxxx