- Author: Betty Victor
Do you remember when you were a child and you had to help in your mother’s garden. I do and it seems she always had a plant that you loved maybe because of the color or shape of the flower and thought when I have “my own place” I will have that plant.
Sad to say I did just that, the plant I choose that my mother had growing in a container. I always wondered why when her others were growing in the soil, but as a child I never asked. But years later I found out why when mine out grew the container I had it in and violets started showing up all over my yard. Maybe the only nice thing I can say about this violet is it blooms late winter, early spring with just the flowers and no leaves when most things are still dormant. After the violet colored flowers fade, the heart-shaped leaves start to appear and stay and multiply and grow larger each day until late fall early winter when they die back, only to return the next winter with many more.
These violet are all over my yard, sun or shade-makes no difference to them they will grow and multiply. You pull them out thinking you have got all parts of the rhizome, only to turn your back and they are back again!
This plant has to be on the most invasive plant list; maybe even in the top group, if not I am going to start a campaign to have it added. Maybe the only way I can get rid of them is to move, but knowing how much of pest they are they probably will find a way to follow me.
- Author: Erin Mahaney
When it recently rained for days in a row, I stood at the window and watched my weeds grow. I have quite the variety of weeds, as I suspect we all do, but some I don’t really mind. For example, Oxalis is extremely invasive, but it is somewhat pretty and is almost enjoyably easy to pull up from the soil. Even if I don’t always get all of the bulbs like I should, at least I can hold some hope that I’m weakening the bulbs by pulling up the rest of the plant. Plus, Oxalis goes dormant with the summer heat. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
But my least favorite? The wild onion, Allium triquetrum, which is also known as the three-cornered leek. It’s not an ugly weed—in fact, it is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental. It has flower stems of about 1 foot tall, with nodding clusters of small, bell-shaped, white flowers. Not surprisingly, it has a strong onion smell.
The wild onion multiplies quickly, spreading by bulbs and seeds, and it is very hard to remove once established. Like Oxalis, it can be controlled by digging up the entire plant, including the bulbs. But unlike Oxalis, which pulls up easily (thus giving me a false, yet satisfying, sense of accomplishment), wild onion snaps at the soil level every time I try to pull it up. So the entire plant must be dug up, which is difficult to do given the extent of its spread throughout the yard, its proximity to other more desirable plants, and the depth to which I must to dig. And I think that’s what I find so aggravating about the wild onion. I could quit work and dig wild onions for the rest of my days, but I’m still fairly sure that I will not prevail. It spreads so quickly and so thoroughly! So at best, I try to content myself with digging a few plants and snapping off the flower stalks so that the plants don’t spread even more via seed. I know there are worse weeds, but this wild onion is the one onion that makes me want to cry.
