Dock
taught me that my Landscape Maintenance teacher was wrong: taking a plant to
the ground once a week does not eventually kill it, even when it is fairly small. Sometimes, you just need a shovel.
The
theory was that a plant, when all of the above-ground portion is gone, spends a
week taking food out of the root, growing new leaves, before putting any food
back into it. This may or may not be
true and would be hard to prove. But in
the case of dock, I pulled leaves off it for years and did not kill it. The leaves break off the crown, just beneath
the soil, and it is so slick that one cannot get a hold of it to pull the
root. Much the same happens with
dandelions, but their crown is not so slick and can sometimes be pulled.
I did find, however, that when dock
is blooming, its flower stalk is strong enough to hold on to the root and pull
the whole thing out, which is the case with many plants that put up multi-flowered
seed stalks, because the root shrinks as the seed stalk grows. This is also the case with many annual
grasses, but not all of them equally.
I finally found that if one slides a
shovel down next to a tap root and pulls back on it, it pops the root loose and
one can pull it out easily without even removing the dirt from the ground. So one can loosen the root, pull it, and
press the dirt down without further disturbing the soil, and you don’t have to
wait until it flowers.
Perennial runner grasses need to have
their rhizomes dug out or loosened and pulled to get rid of the plant. Such is the case with broadleaf rhizomes as
well, such as oxalis, creeping jenny, and sheep sorrel, a smaller relative of
dock. Like dock, I found that just
pulling the above-ground portions of these will never kill them, nor even stop
them from spreading. If the soil is
loose enough, one can follow roots underground with one’s hands and pull them
out.
The idea that one can kill weeds by
taking their tops off once a week seemed to dictate that I should work on all
properties once a week. But many
customers could not afford weekly service and many yards are too small to work
a whole day once a week. For a while, I
worked half-days for small-yard customer, going from one to the next, which was
too much running around. I eventually settled
on a working most yards every other week, and found that once a month in small
yards was usually enough keep weeds from blooming and setting seed between
visits most of the time. But bad weather
or sickness could delay service long enough for seeds to ripen and spread, so I generally do them bi-weekly as well,
sometimes two in a day.
Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener 541-955-9040 rycke@gardener.com
