Botanical Name

Indigofera spicata

DESCRIBE YOURSELF

I am a short-lived perennial plant. My leaves can go a sort of pinky purple during summer, hence my name. I set a lot of seeds when I flower and my seed heads look a bit like an arrowhead. And I have a really deep tap root, which makes it hard to dig me out of your lawn. All of this makes Creeping Indigo a much despised weed, despite the good I am doing for your soil. I have pinkish red coloured flowers and set lots of seeds from each flower. These seeds develop into prickles so make walking on your lawn unpleasant.

WHAT I’M TELLING YOU

As a weed, I am great in taking advantage of the poor condition of your soil. I like to grow in soils that are dry and alkaline. And I really love soils that are deficient in nutrients including nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus.

BENEFITS

My deep roots may annoy you, but I’m actually working on breaking up the compaction in your soil.

CONTROL OF CREEPING INDIGO

I am best controlled by listening to what I’m telling you about your soil condition! I love growing in soils that are low in nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous, which can be helped by adding organic matter. Otherwise try hand weeding. Just make sure you do this after it has rained, otherwise my deep root will be difficult to dig out. Another method is to use a sharp knife and cut my leaves from my root. This allows the roots to keep working on your impacted soil. Add the leaves, minus seeds to your compost heap.

I can also be controlled by using a biodynamic pepper ( see Biodynamic Peppers) However, weed peppers work best when combined with a weed tea. Weed teas take the nutrients I have accumulated in my leaves and feed them back to the soil.

If you must spray, use an organic weed killer comprised of vinegar, salt and soap. Other ways of controlling me include using organic herbicides like Slasher. I can also be boiled alive by pouring boiling water on my leaves. All these actions should be taken before I flower and set seed!

The post Creeping Indigo appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Botanical Name

Medicago Hispida Syn M. polymorpha 

DESCRIBE YOURSELF

I am an annual plant of the legume family. This means I am great at fixing nitrogen in your soil. And I have a really deep tap root, which makes it hard to dig me out of your lawn. All of this makes Burr Medic a much despised weed, despite the good I am doing for your soil. I have yellow coloured flowers and set lots of seeds from each flower. These seeds develop into prickles so make walking on your lawn unpleasant.

WHAT I’M TELLING YOU

As a weed, I am great in taking advantage of the poor condition of your soil. I like to grow in soils that are dry and alkaline. And I really love soils that are deficient in nutrients including nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus.

BENEFITS OF BURR MEDIC

My deep roots may annoy you, but I’m actually working on breaking up the compaction in your soil.

CONTROLLING BURR MEDIC

I am best controlled by listening to what I’m telling you about your soil condition! I love growing in soils that are low in nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous, which can be helped by adding organic matter. Otherwise try hand weeding. Just make sure you do this after it has rained, otherwise my deep root will be difficult to dig out. Another method is to use a sharp knife and cut my leaves from my root. This allows the roots to keep working on your impacted soil. Add the leaves, minus seeds to your compost heap.

I can also be controlled by using a biodynamic pepper ( see Biodynamic Peppers) However, weed peppers work best when combined with a weed tea. Weed teas take the nutrients I have accumulated in my leaves and feed them back to the soil.

If you must spray, use an organic weed killer comprised of vinegar, salt and soap. Other ways of controlling me include using organic herbicides like Slasher. I can also be boiled alive by pouring boiling water on my leaves. All these actions should be taken before I flower and set seed!

The post Burr Medic or Burr Clover appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Pests on plant

Normally this request is also accompanied by a desire for it to be in a single application as “I don’t have time to be spraying these insects or weeds regularly”!

Many people don’t seem to understand that for a poison or pesticide or weedicide to work as instantly and effectively as they have requested, it is usually a strong poison.

Poison

By definition, this means that it is not going to be safe for their children, pets or even for themselves!

Sure we may require a bigger dose of the poison to kills us than that which we use to kill the insects. But instant death may not be the only outcome!

Many of these chemicals, like the glyphosates used to kill weeds are now being shown to cause cancers in humans.

Poison

And yet people continue to want to poison themselves and the earth! Just to get rid of an insect that might even be doing good!

This week I spoke to a gardener who was trying to eradicate the microwasps hovering above their lawns. They were sure that these wasps were the reason for their dead lawn. In fact, the wasps were busily killing the lawn grubs that had caused the damage! Although I treid to explain this, the person still wanted to poison the wasps!

Praying Mantis egg sack

As you can probably guess, the answer to the question of whether I can recommend a strong poison that is safe is always NO! I cannot recommend a strong poison that will kill insects and weeds and not have the potential to affect children or pets.

In fact, as many of my regular readers will know, I am a big fan of helping mother nature do the job of sorting out troublesome pests in my garden. I have found that she often has a safe and effective solution that does not require me to spray any insects or use any poisons.

Not only that, by not spraying I have been happy to welcome natural pest killers into my garden. Like the praying mantis egg sack above and the green frog below in my garden!

Green tree frog

Happy gardening

Rohanne, Your Edible Garden Guru

The post What is a safe garden poison? appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Oxalis leaves

Have you ever noticed that it is the weeds which are the first to appear?

In this particular case the weed I have been targeting Oxalis weed. Oxalis is a particularly nasty weed.

Oxalis corm

It is nasty because it is difficult to eradicate. While the Oxalis weeds leaves will die back after they are poisoned, the underground corm is much harder to get rid of.

If you try and remove the weed by hand, it will easily release the leaves making you think you’ve pulled the weed out. But the oxalis corm or nut will stay in the ground and grow stronger and larger!!

It also reproduces underground, sending out runners for new plants as well as creating new bulbils which spread to create new plants. Add to this the fact this it flowers and produces seeds above ground and you have a pesky weed!

Many non-gardeners let the oxalis grow and think they are clever when it produces its “pretty pink flower” (see photo).

This just goes to show that a weed really is just a plant growing in the wrong place!

If, like me you want to remove the Oxalis weed, and you don’t want to use strong herbicides, you don’t have a lot of options!

You can pour boiling water over the leaves. And if you do this often enough, you can kill the weed.

Oxalis flower

The other option is to remove the Oxalis weed by digging it up! I’m not sure if I should admit this, but I get a real satisfaction from digging down and being able to remove the corm and leaves of the weed.

Oxalis are weeds to me and this week I was pleased to fill almost a full bucket with oxalis weed!

And, luckily, I was about 80 percent successful in getting the corm (see photo).

True success – the leaves and corm removed! This really is the only way to successfully eradicate this weed.

Since writing this post I have had considerable success in using Biodynamic peppers to control oxalis weed. See Magical Biodynamics

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, Your Personal Garden Expert

The post Oxalis weed – A story of a Nasty Weed appeared first on Delectable Garden.

While walking the girls this morning I noticed that a lot of lawns are developing a good a collection of Bindii weeds.

This means that all these lawns won’t be able to be walked on come spring, as the Bindii sets its sharp prickly seed!

This will impact not just my dogs who hate walking on prickly, Bindii weed infested grass. It will also impact on your children as they won’t be able to play on the grass either!

So, now is the time to treat your lawns for Bindii weed. It is too late once they have set seed, as no weedkiller will treat the Bindii seed. And you have also set yourself up for having an even bigger crop next year!

How do you tell if you have Bindii weed, before it sets its tell-tale seed? It is normally a bright green, almost ferny looking plant (see photo).

Bindii weeds

So, what is the best way to treat Bindii weed?

Personally, I remove them by hand. Although this can be very time consuming to start with, I have found that after the initial weeding they are very slow to return. I did not find this when using the commercial weedkillers.

However, if you want to spray the Bindii’s there are lots of weedkillers around that deal with Bindii weed.

Just be sure to check what sort of grass you have, as some of the weedkillers will also kill broad leaf grasses like buffalo.

Happy gardening

Rohanne, your Personal Garden Expert

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The post Bindii Weeds on the rise! appeared first on Delectable Garden.