Showing posts with label Weeding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weeding. Show all posts

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Catchweed Annihilation

Occasionally, mundane gardening chores, such as weeding, watering and spraying, impolitely intrude on the more interesting tasks of pruning, deadheading, and the really barn-raising "watching paint dry" feeling Professor gets while waiting on that new rose or peony to flower.  Such chores are easier if one imagines they are on search and destroy missions deeply behind the front lines, engaging and destroying the enemy wherever and whenever found.  While distasteful, the slaying of garden invaders cannot be long-delayed, else a gardener finds oneself overrun and demoralized, and subsequently retreats into the shadows of the house.
My enemy this year seems to be a world-beating crop of Galium aparine, commonly called bedstraw, catchweed or goosegrass, that is spreading like a wildfire on the prairie before a wind.  I tried to ignore it, then placed it on my list of "Things To Get To" rather than confronting the shiny horde, but there came a time when I could no longer turn my head from the onslaught.  I've always seen a little of it around, wisps here or there trying to hide beneath daylilies or consorting with cosmos, but this year it seems to be searching for its own Lebensraum, living space, poking up through every green perennial or shrub in a bid for world domination.

Like many gardeners of my era, when I want to fight back against Mama Nature's most recent attempt to return my garden to an evolutionary laboratory, I hear the wise words of Hannibal Lector to the fledgling Agent Starling in the movie Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkin's voice in my head, quoting Marcus Aurelius, "First principles, Clarice, Simplicity...Of each particular thing, ask What is it in itself? What is its nature?"   With catchweed, its simple nature is to stick; to the plant it seeks to smother, to the gardener, to itself.   ProfessorRoush, ever the aspiring garden Ninja, recognized this year that the destruction of catchweed lies in its own innate velcro-ey nature.  

My weapons; a simple pair of cheap cotton garden gloves.  You'll notice the difference between the right faded and left, newer glove?  Not surprisingly, as a lefty, I wear out several left gloves before the rights, with the result that I have a surplus of decently intact rights and the surviving left gloves are usually full of holes and ready to disintegrate.  But they all still work as allies in catchweed obliteration.  I simply start pulling up a clump, the catchweed grabbing onto the soft glove, and then, keeping the catchweed in my hands, I let the catchweed pick up and tear out its fellow soldiers, massively clumping together in a lemming-like rush to removal. 
It's satisfying watching that stringy, clingy weed disappear from my garden.  I cleared it two weeks ago and I'm only just now seeing a few wisps from stragglers try to stealthily emerge from the shadows.  I find it much less daunting to reach down and pluck out a few stems here and there as I pass by a bed than it is to confront a vast multitude of creeping contagion.  Take it from me, attack your weeding head on, because Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement doesn't work any better in the garden than it did in history.  Better for us, now as before, to follow Churchill's advice, "....to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us...(our aim is) victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be."

Friday, April 29, 2011

Trophy Weeding

A posting by Carol on here May Dreams Gardens blog here, suggesting that a dandelion she had pulled was at least a 4-pointer, got me to thinking that gardeners everywhere need a common scoring system to rate their weeding efforts.  After all, the Boone and Crockett Club has been scoring trophy bucks for decades, allowing armed vicious meat-hunters everywhere to compare and brag about the size of their.....uhmmm...antlers, so why shouldn't gardeners be able to compare their weed slaughter from region to region?  Think of the possibilities:  trophy presentations at monthly garden meetings and at national floral shows; record-winning specimens dry-mounted for home or office display; income-potential for gardeners selling weeding rights to prime weed growth areas; competitive teams of weeders vieing for world championships;  professional weeders with big money contracts for advertising endorsements of horticultural products.

Since I claim credit for the full-conception of the idea, I also feel responsible for creating the rating system for measurement.  I would therefore propose the following as the ProfessorRoush Official Weed Demise (PROWD) scoring system for domestic horticultural invaders:
 
A.  # of individual flowers/ flower buds on the weed at the time of soil extrication.
 
B.  Length of the longest point of the root system from soil level to tip, in centimeters.

C.  Overall mass of the weed (soil removed by washing) in avoirdupois ounces (28 grams/ounce).

D. Relative adverse environmental conditions during weed collection awarded from 0-10 points, with recent rain and 70F conditions scoring 0 and dry soil and 110F ambient temperatures receiving a score of 10.  If the gardener is actually dehydrated or suffering sunstroke at the time of weeding, a bonus of 5 points may be added.  If the gardener is actually hospitalized after collection, an additional bonus of 5 points is awarded.

E.  Relative removal completeness, scored on a scale of 0-10 points, with full roots and no breakage receiving a 10 score.  Subtract 2 points for ripping off a tap-rooted specimen at ground level.

F.  Use of mechanical devices for assistance are scored from 0-5 points with (-3) points awarded for rototillers and 5 points awarded if the weed was pulled bare-handed.  A ten-point bonus is awarded if pulled bare-handed and the weed causes contact dermatitis or has thorns.  Another ten-point bonus may be awarded if the weed was gathered in close proximity to a fire-ant nest or bumble-bee colony and the gardener was bitten or stung.

The guidelines above should be sufficient to establish records for individual species trophies. However, for comparison between species, the following category should also be assessed:

G. Relative invasiveness or reproductive potential of the species from 0-10 points, with government-recognized invasive species scoring 10, kudzu 25, Chameleon Plant (Houttuynia cordata) 50 and the common dayflower (Commelina communis) rating 100 points. Zero points are awarded for pulling up Lamb's Quarters during a rainstorm.

The competing gardener should note that careful attention to certain details during weed collection may increase total scores. Therefore, it is advisable to attempt to inflate scores by delaying the actual weed collection until the gardener is actually suffering delirium and muscle cramps, but such acts must be officially witnessed and attested to by a friend or spouse who told the gardener repeatedly what idiots they were. 

So, that's it, the ProfessorRoush Official Weed Demise (PROWD) scoring system.  On that scale, the above pictured dandelion collected on 4/22/11 would score 6+27+9+2+10+5= 59 PROWD points, presently a world record dandelion since it is also the only one entered in the official record book.

Additionally, since ProfessorRoush recognizes the deep competitiveness rampant among gardeners that leads some of them to acts of espionage and sabotage at Rose Exhibitions and Dahlia Shows, any claim for a record-setting specimen is disqualified if the gardener has made any attempt to fertilize or use growth stimulants on an individual weed, or to selectively breed weeds for size and invasiveness. Don't bother to deny it, I know some of you out there were already contemplating how to improve your entries.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...