Weed with an attitude

Honey, would you be a dear and remove a couple of weeds from my perennial garden? Sure. What a epic struggle! The weeds in question were pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), and they were 6 feet tall with roots all the way to southern hemisphere. The tap roots were actually larger in diameter than my forearm, and the bloody shame of it is that there's nothing good you can do with such a nastily toxic plant. Why a fellow can work up quite a thirst pulling poke. And how do they get so big so fast? Looks like we neglected the garden for years, but not at all. Our might weed wrench doesn't work on them either because the herbaceous stems, as big as they are, are too soft for the jaws of death.
Innovation: Saw a fellow pulling up big old tent stakes with a nifty device and pulled them using a small motor driven puller. So what about hooking up weed wrench type jaws to such a motorized puller? Any handy inventor types out there to whip up a prototype?

On the weed war path

A late spring and a sudden transition to summer (drinking an iced coffee) has done nothing for my humor or my field work, but the weeds have done quite well, and so the Phactors have declared war upon weeds. Please notice that there was a formal declaration of war after we were invaded first and we only wage war to protect the homeland gardens. Here are the worst offenders: Indian strawberry, creeping charlie, oxalis, tillering grass, and the usual array of woody weeds: wild cherry, hackberry, sugar maple, redbud. In shady areas there can be 100-300 woody weed seedlings per square yard, and if you don't get them young, you end up with many less, but much harder weeds to remove (all hail the weed wrench!). The next step will be re-mulching lots of beds and paths. One good trick for gardens and paths is to put down either two layers (2 sheets) of newspaper or one layer of construction paper under the mulch. It decomposes but blocks weeds quite well for a season. This is particular important around shrubs and trees that do not like the fabric weed barriers, which are only useful under hard scape. Here's the real secret about weeding; get Mrs. Phactor going. She's a demon on weeds, sort of gets to a point where she just can't stand the sight of them any more, and shazam! Oops, caught taking a blog break!

Strawberries & Indian Strawberries

One of the worst weeds of strawberry (Fragaria) is Indian strawberry (Duchesnea indica). In flower and fruit these two species are easy to tell apart (yellow flowers, 5 bracts, red achenes), but early in the season the leaves are quite similar (Indian strawberries have sharper teeth on the leaf margins), but if you aren't sharply observant it can be the devil's own time to weed out the invasive Indian strawberry, especially when fairly abundant. Good thing the Phactor has experience and observational experience to sort them out without any mistakes, but it isn't easy.