Which weeds do I have? How should I handle them?

Hi folks,

I'm so new to gardening that I'm bound to ask the wrong questions in the wrong order (excuse the Andre Previn gag). I recently had my garden bramble cleared to make way for a gravel based garden with 4 flower bed/planted areas. However, I'm seeing some things sprouting through that I believe may be weeds. My first observation is that there are so may shoots in so many patches of the bed that I wonder if the soil was already badly contaminated when it went down. Can you help me identify them, please? If you can identify them, I'd be really interested in your thoughts on how to squash the blight.

Update: I've uploaded some different pictures, hopefully providing a closer view.

If someone can help me, I'd appreciate it.

Tom

PS. I hear that treating bindweed requires a different method to hoeing, so it'd be super helpful to know what I'm dealing with. Many thanks.

 

They're too small to identify Tom, but you will always get weeds in your flowerbeds. The seeds get blown in by the wind, or dropped by birds, insects etc.
The easiest thing to do is get a hoe, and every few days hoe between the plants. You angle the blade so it is just under the soil and cuts the weeds off. Then leave them there to wilt. A hot sunny day is perfect for this.

 

Looks as though we're back to the Glyphosate debate If it's still available in UK, used judiciously it's still the only thing that has a hope of eradicating bindweed. You need the concentrate, dilute it yourself, and brush it on to every bit of foliage, avoiding contact with any other plant. Repeat if/when it re-appears.

 

I have a lot of bindweed in my garden. When I see it attacking one of my plants, I gently unwind it and trace the stem back to the soil where I pull out as much as I can. Other than that I don't stress about it. I noticed a video on YouTube with Alan Titchmarsh showing how to tackle bindweed, and was tickled to see that he did exactly the same as me.

 

I have a lot too but it's not just what is going on above ground that bothers me and ensure that I don't give up the battle. In a closely-planted garden where everything is competing for root-space and moisture for 3 or 4 months of the year, I can't afford to let subterranean menaces like bindweed, horsetail fern and couch grass run riot.
The farmer neighbour's former bad practice of spraying these but then cultivating the fields before the roots were truly dead has created a nightmare scenario where my garden is surrounded on three sides by rampant nasties just waiting to move in.

 

Thanks for these early replies. So, as feared, I have bindweed. Lot's of it. I'm so new to this that I've just ordered some gardening tools to tackle this blight – a fork and hori hori – so I expect to be on my knees trying to uproot what I can and then disentangle the roots from the soil. Is there anything I can do to stem the grown and/or prevent it in future? I've read that mulching may help. Is there anything I can do with mulching that might help my cause? Should I rip the shoots out while I wait for my weeding tools to arrive? Will this weaken the roots of energy?

Thank you.

 

Possibly some wood avens in some of your photos. They have tiny yellow flowers which are pollinated very easily by insects. The set seeds then are also easily moved around the garden. Hoeing these wont get rid of the roots so digging and getting the whole plant up is best.

 

Relatively speaking, you don't have a lot of bindweed (yet!)
It's not clear in your photos to what extent you have planted up.
If its a bed in preparation, then use the rest of this year to remove as much as possible. Certainly spray with glysophate, on a still day, while these are growing. If there are plants you wish to retain, then care must taken to protect them by covering. The glysophate will only enter through leaves, and is carried down to destroy the roots .Once treated, the roots will eventually die. One method is to place canes beside the emerging binds so that it entwines upon a cane. It can then be moved away from desirable plants and treated, perhaps by painting, with the solution of glysophate.
If the area is to be completely cleared prior to any planting, then you could cover the bed with a thick light excluding sheet and leave it covered until Spring. But if you dig/hoe/pull it, any tiny fragment of living root will produce a new plant in a few weeks. Good luck.

 

If it’s an unplanted area then it is possible to get rid of bindweed. We successfully dug out bindweed with only the odd reoccurrence from the site where our greenhouse now sits (approx 3 x 5m). We dug an initial trench, picking out all the bindweed roots and the backfilled this to create another trench and so on until we had gone across the whole area. We dug down around 18inches, only going further if following a root down. We filled a whole wheelie bin!

We did the whole area again a couple of weeks later, far less satisfying as there were hardly any roots to find so felt like lots of effort for little visible reward.

We have had the odd small shoot appear in the years since, am guessing probably from seed rather than left behind roots but that’s all.

For wood avens (geum urbinum) I would recommend you get the whole plant up as they are perennial so may re sprout if only the leaves are hoed off is left behind. They won’t come back, imo, from odd bits of root. Did no time to weed, just make sure not to let them go to seed, yank the flower spikes off until you’ve time to weed the plant out.

 

I find bindweed quite easy to control - just pull it up and leave it where I find it. I don't bother unwinding it or digging up roots. It will grow back weaker, smaller leaves, thinner stems. I pull it up again. It grows a third time, weaker still. I pull it up.
It generally then has run out of carbohydrates to make new growth...

 

I take that approach with a lot of weeds too @Stephen Southwest. We did the blitz on the greenhouse site as it was completely overrun with bindweed and I wanted the area clear before the structure went up. But definitely constantly hoeing/pulling up will eventually make most plants give up.

That’s part of the no-dig approach too, plus seeing the pulled up leaves/stems as ‘free’ compost/mulch material

 

There ia baby bindweed in all your photos. I expect roots got broken when the bed was being prepared.

If you don't mind using glyphosate and those plants are still small then spray each one with a spray bottle of weedkiller containing glyphosate. It takes 2 to 3 weeks for the plant to die. If you are willing to work on your knees then when they are looking really droopy and dying dig each one up.

Every healthy bit of root left behind will make a new plant. Using a hoe does not work and I speak from experience

 

I don't see wood avens. I see a largish plant that looks like it but, as the bed was recently planted, is more likely to be a geum. Same family.