For example on a walk round the garden today I came across an ongoing problem with our stipa gigantea or Golden Oat Grass. Its one of my favourite ornamental grasses and it so lives up to its name when the oat-like flowers catch the warm late evening light and it almost shimmers in the breeze. It has grown happily near the house for about three years.
Last year several daisy flowers (shasta to be precise) appeared to be growing out of the middle of grass. We have never grown shastas in this particular garden. I think it must have come in as a seed when we bought the grass or a very small plant and now it's quite a size.
I hummed and hawed about what to do about it last year. I ended up doing nothing more than snapping off the flower heads and of course the daisy is back again in the middle of the grass bigger and better than before.
This is what it looks like at the moment as the shasta is about to flower. A small investigation last year showed the daisy to be deeply entwined with the grass.
There's also a plant growing through the Egyptian walking onions (Allium ×proliferum) . A campanula I think.
The agapanthus or African Lily has double trouble in the shape of a dandelion and a grass entwined.
So what to do? The campanula and the Eygptian onions are easy to separate as the onions grow on the surface and can be broken into individual bulbs. And we should also end up with a free campanula.
The only solution to the other plants I think is to dig up the clumps and remove the interlopers. Probably this something that should be done next spring and the plants immediately put back in the ground although they may be in smaller clumps.
Any gardeners out there got any other suggestions? I would love to hear them!
I planted up a new border earlier this year and all over the place weeds are popping up inside clumps of perennials. Sometimes I find gently easing the clump out of the soil allows young dandelions etc to be removed because they are not well established. Sadly - simpling glaring at them and wishing them gone has no effect :-)
ReplyDeleteI know I tried shaming them out of there but it didn't work. Thanks for the advice. I think that is probably the way to go and sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that funny--I've tried glaring as well with no success. Is there a pattern here? Snipping the weeds as close as possible to the ground about once a month for one season seems to work fairly well--they try coming back for a while but eventually despair. That probably wouldn't phase the grass growing in the Agapanthus, though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip, Stacey. I t may be that I start doing that in the summer and see how it goes. The agapanthus may well have to come out and be cleaned up and replanted. Shame as it was forming a good clump.
ReplyDeleteI hate it when that happens! I spent hours trying to get rid of all the couch grass growing amongst the strawberries I rescued from our allotment, and am so glad I decided to keep them in pots "just in case". There is now at least as much couch grass as there was before, but at least it can't spread beyond the pots. I tend to yank the interlopers out as I potter about during the season and then attempt to remember which plants need digging up and their roots washing to clear out the stowaways before re-planting. I suspect this could be done in Autumn for most things, though not the grasses. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI have a sneaking admiration for plants like dandelions that pop up in the middle of other plants. It's a good place to hide until the flowers appear and I suddenly notice them and thin "Where did that come from?'
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