Unwelcome Visitors

When I first got back into gardening as an adult I'd just moved into a basement flat in Camberwell which had a garden. It was mostly paving but had some borders and an enormous elder tree at the back.  As I was pretty poor I decided to grow all of my plants from seed. With no greenhouse and much to the annoyance of my boyfriend I had seed trays all over the kitchen floor. I had cleared the borders of weeds and just planted out some of the seedlings when I had to go on a two week tour with the dance company I was working with.   I was welcomed back by my very proud boyfriend who said he had been looking after my garden, watering and weeding. He took me outside to view his work, when I looked out in the garden I found a lot of bare earth. He'd weeded all of my seedlings. What could I say.......... 

As this dear boyfriend is now my dear husband, I thought I'd do a run down of the weeds in my garden, just in case. 

There are two main types of weeds, annual (grow, flower and die in one year) and perennial (the buggers that keep coming back). The former and quite easy to get rid of if you get them before their flower, the latter are a pain in the arse. 

(I'm using botanical paintings just to make them look nicer)

Perennials pains

Brambles

Mixed feelings on this one as blackberries are so yummy. But I think on the whole I'd prefer to forage them elsewhere .

Broad leaved willow herb

Quite easy to clear with a fork but can tear, leaving the roots behind for another year. 

Wood Avens

Annoying as it does look like a it's cultivated cousin until it flowers but quite easy to  lift.

Bindweed

is there any garden that doesn't have this strangulating pernicious pain! if there is I'd like to move in!  it seems that I have two types.  hedge bindweed Convolvulus arvensis, the white flowering one that most gardens seem to have, and field bindweed it travels along the ground pulling things down rather than twining up and strangling everything.  Both are as bad as each other. But I only seem to have them in a small patch so operation strangulation has begun.

Annuals

Goose grass

One of my favourite weeds on that it is fun to play with and quite easy to clear.

Common field speedwell

spreading suffocating, but pretty blue flowers.

Chickweed

Easy to clear with hoeing.

A tip I remember from Bunny Guinness off gardeners world was, if you don't have time to weed the garden properly deadhead the weeds to stop them flowering. That way you are at least stopping them from spreading.   But do go back and clear the weeds at a later date, otherwise you'll never get rid of them.

I must say that Bjorn is very proud that he can now discern many different types of plants, but he does steer clear of doing the weeding.