Trail of various weeds between veggie patches
The first activity in working out a cohesive weed management strategy is to understand exactly what it is we are dealing with here. In other words, conduct a weed Inspection of the appropriate areas of the garden. What are the appropriate areas? Well that depends on you.
For me the appropriate areas are the veggie growing areas of the back yard and productive perennial growing areas of the front yard. I divided up the veggie growing areas into south, central, west and north. Because surprisingly there are differences. The handy bit of this approach is that I didn’t have one vast area, I had a number of smaller areas which I could review as I got the time.
Identifying the weeds
There are a number of ways to identify the weeds in the area of review, but for me the two main ones were using my collection of weed identification books and using a plant identification app on my phone. Some of the books I use to identify weeds can be found here & here, and the app that I use is the free Plantnet app.
When identifying the weeds it is important to use the Latin/scientific rather than just the common name. This is important for a number of reasons –
What I would call 'oxalis' is actually oxalis latifolia AKA fishtail wood sorrel
- Common names can vary from place to place but the scientific name is very specific and refers to one plant only. On Facebook I see a common ‘You Can Eat These Weeds’ poster come up on people’s pages regularly. Unfortunately, even though there is a small and difficult to make out picture, they only use common names and it originates in the US. One of the weeds listed as edible is fireweed, which in the US is Chamerion angustifolium, but here in Aus, the plant we refer to as fireweed is Senecio madagascariensis, a totally different plant, and toxic.
- I can identify a fair number of edible weeds, and I found that a weed which I was confident was mallow. After some work with the plant identification app it turned out that I had not only common mallow (malva neglecta), but also Egyptian mallow (malva parviflora) and red flowered mallow (modiola caroliniana) which is also referred to as American mallow. This sort of distinction may prove important as research continues because they will have their own separate characteristics and may require different management techniques.
- There is a weed that I had been told (by no less an authority than my father) was wandering Jew. One of the books I have refers to the name ‘scurvy weed’ (which is edible) as an alternative name for wandering Jew, hence I thought they were the same plant. In my researches it turns out that:
Commelina Cyanea
a) Wandering Jew is in fact tradescantia albiflora and is toxic.
b) The plant I had known as wandering Jew was commelina cyanea, also known as scurvy weed and is edible.
c) Just in case I thought things were too easy, there is a plant called hairy wandering Jew which is also a member of the commelinaceae family with a Latin name of commelina benghalensis which seems to be edible.
Needless to say, knowing the Latin names of plants being identified and subsequently managed is important!
Carrying out the review
Once I had divided the site up into areas that made sense to me, it was just a case of spending a lovely half an hour, maybe a bit more, wandering around and looking at the abundant crop of weeds in each area. I would move through reasonably systematically, looking at each area. I would pick out a weed, bring it up on the app on my phone and then write it down, both the common and scientific name, then move on until I had recorded all the weeds in that particular area. I could then move on to the next.
Stinging nettle (Urtica Urens) - called stinging for a reason!
What I found worked was to have the phone app as the front line of identification and then use the books in my library to clear up any concerns on any identification that did not seem right and to provide more information about a particular weed once I had the name.
Back in the day, I did weeds as a subject in the Farm Technology Certificate at TAFE. There were no mobile phones in those days let alone apps, so I had a feel for what would be required when identifying weeds, as that was part of the course. While I am usually a fairly analogue bloke, the phone app saved me HOURS of time looking up the books, although the books were invaluable in their own right.
Recording
I put together an Excel spreadsheet (a copy of which is available here) to be able to record and keep track of my weeds in some sort of systematic fashion. In the first column I record the date the inspection was carried out. This is important because different weeds grow at different times of the year, so I intend on doing at least a summer and winter inspection. It remains to be seen if it is worthwhile also doing a spring and autumn one.
The second column is the common name, closely followed by a column for the scientific name. The fourth column records the particular area where the weed was located. The Fifth column provides a place to record the PITA score (check out the next article in this series, coming soon). The sixth column is to be filled out with the preferred conditions for each weed, this will be the result of some research, hitting the books and the ‘net and the final column provides a a place to record the weed management strategy(ies) once decided upon.
It is a bit of work, but as the saying goes, knowledge is power, and if you want to avoid reaching for the herbicide, even an organic herbicide, it is worth doing the work that will give you an edge over your weeds. If a new weed turns up, you already have a process to follow help you manage it!
Summary of the process
- Divide your weedy spaces up into manageable areas.
- Download a plant identification app if you are going to use one
- Go out into your weedy area and systematically identify all weeds in the area using your app and/or weed identification books
- Record all information (common and scientific names) on all weeds present
- Once the area is complete, transfer the information to weed spreadsheet
