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Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 21.22: Garden Herpes (aka Weeds!) [1]
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Date: 2025-05-31
Made ya look, didn’t I?! The “garden herpes” coinage is courtesy of the one-and-only CWalter, and it’s a truly amazing descriptor of how we experience weeds: unwanted, unwelcome, tenacious, infectious!
Good morning, Saturday Morning Garden Blog-Friends old and new! This cheerful long-running tradition appears every Saturday morning at 9am Eastern, and lasts well into the week as conversations percolate. A core crew of us reads every comment, as far into the week as it goes.
Anyone who likes to garden or talk about gardening or gardening-adjacent topics and whatever they devolve into… WELCOME!
Today I am waxing eloquent — or at least loquacious — on the topic of weeds. I got a few things to say, but I am no particular expert on the topic. Please join me in treating this one something like an open thread. I bet you all have something to say about weeds, or herpes, or both.
I am something of a word-nerd, so let’s get this show on the road with a couple of dictionary definitions.
Merriam-Webster has this to say re “weed”:
1 a(1) : a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth especially : one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants
As we know all too well, “weed” is also a verb that implies weed-removal.
Meanwhile, herpes simplex is a virus that can cause blisters/ulcers in the mouth or on the private-parts (we supposedly only get raunchy here at SMGB after 5pm. Pick yer time zone.) Much like certain weeds, herpes replicates itself and jumps from garden to garden (as it were), and can be managed but not really eradicated.
CWalter’s recent railing against garden herpes was about parsnips. All had started well, with a purchase of nice happy edible parsnip seed — as opposed to the nasty invasive wild parsnip that causes phytophotodermatitis. But, she let the happy flowers grow, and they went to seed, and now they come up in her yard. And she mows ‘em, which is a management but not elimination technique.
That actually tags in nicely to the Merriam-Webster definition of “weed” as a plant that is not valued where it is growing. The parsnip was good stuff in the garden. But once it invaded the yard, oh my. It’s all over. Better just mow it.
I have a fascinating take on “weeds” that is playing out in my front flower bed, as depicted in the cover photo. Here it is again for reference:
The stalks with closely-clumped flowers are bugleweed; the exuberant weed in the middle is creeping Charlie
Both are of the mint family, both have pretty purple flowers. But only one is routinely sold for ground-cover and had clearly been deliberately introduced before we moved in a couple of decades ago — the one with Weed in the name that we don’t consider a weed. The other is all over the place, lawn and garden and flower beds alike. We treat/manage it in several different ways depending on where.
1) MOW IT.
Kinda pretty out there, hmm?
As a mint-plant, creeping Charlie spreads both by seed and by, well, creeping. Once it gets thoroughly tangled with something, it’s hard to pull by hand. Easier to just accept its presence in the yard, and smile at the pretty flowers, and mow it.
2) PULL IT.
Fortunately, creeping Charlie is satisfying to pull. As long as the ground is not too hard and the strings are not too tangled, it holds pretty lightly to the earth. Unlike, say, spearmint which tends to take some digging, creeping Charlie grows over the ground instead of via its roots. Here’s an example I just ran out and did:
Before. See the one vine stretching out in search of a place to root?
After. Pulled right out.
3) ZOTZ IT.
So, I know that RoundUp is controversial. There is a raging debate over whether glyphosphate (the active ingredient) is carcinogenic or not, with different scientists coming to different conclusions. Here chez AnnieJo, we’ve been known to use the stuff in selected circumstances… such that I know it does indeed work on creeping Charlie! But, we try not to.
I also, for purposes of this diary, tried a homemade weedkiller that mahdalgal posted two weeks ago:
1 gallon white vinegar
1 cup table salt
1 T of dish soap Add salt and dish soap to the gallon jug of vinegar. Shake vigorously. Transfer to spray bottle. Cheap, non-chemical weed killer that works! Warning: weeded area stinks of vinegar for about 15 minutes….
I don’t mind the vinegar stink, and it was kinda fun to try something new. There was definitely some impact:
Sprayed area on left looking very peaky, unsprayed on right is happy & healthy
I might have needed to soak it more thoroughly to do it right! I also did do a bit of web-searching to see what I could find, because I had a memory of “salting the ground” as something that invading armies of antiquity used to do to their enemies so that no crops would grow! And I did indeed find a certain note of caution at the Knowledgebase run cooperatively by land-grand university extension volunteers on the matter. It is indeed possible to over-salt your soil… but that wouldn’t matter at the base of my deck as in the photo. And, apparently the vinegar treatment doesn’t attack the roots to the extent that the dreaded/mighty-effective RoundUp will do.
Anyway! On to Approach Number Four.
4) MULCH IT.
Straw mulch has become our garden go-to, after an infuriating battle with purslane in our vegetable garden patch, which was ca. 20 ft on a side at that point. (We have expanded since). Purslane is a succulent plant that is chock full of Vitamin C and can be a valued addition to salads or sandwiches, or so I’ve heard. I find the texture a bit off-putting, and I find its garden tenacity to be infuriating. It’s one of those goodies where the seeds can survive for years in the soil, and I understand that if you leave even a small part of the plant behind (not completely removed), it can merrily regrow itself. Garden herpes, all the way!
In the pandemic summer, when we were still rototilling our garden every year and doing weed management by hand and hoe, we made a major effort to clear the garden end to end of the purslane that was trying to take over. Here’s the effort in progress:
Purslane B Gone! But, haven’t gotten to the tomato section yet.
Alas, after hours of back-breaking hand-pulling and hoe-ing, by the time we got to the end of the big purslane eradication pass… it was coming back already at the other end of the garden where we started. Great was the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
So that’s when we went for THE MULCH APPROACH. We began covering all unplanted areas with a nice thick layer of straw mulch (wheat straw or marsh grass) and just adding more each year. Any sprouted wheat pulls up easily, and the mulch cover-smothers the purslane et al., and the straw eventually decomposes and enriches the soil. We haven’t rototilled since 2020 and it is working just fine!
Here is Mr. AnnieJo, spokesmodel for Merry Light’s tie-dye fashion, barreling in this year’s mulch from the car:
I made him stop for the photo, ha!
And, a before and after in progress!
You can see that our spinach is producing happily right now. And, the wood sorrel is also happily poking right on through last year’s mulch. But we’re going to wait to mulch the spinach area till it has bolted and done, at which point we’ll have it pulled and spread on a nice mulch layer so that the next crop (muskmelons, which have been sown between the two white sticks on the left near the spinach) can have a fresh mulch bed to grow on.
The one real drawback we’ve encountered with the straw mulch is in the spring, when gestating mama-bunnies decide that the straw would be the PERFECT place to nest, and move heaven and earth to get in there and reproduce. This year Mr. AnnieJo caught a mama with an almost-finished nest in the lettuce bed; last year, we didn’t catch a nest among the okra and the babies had a field day once they were out and about. Fight garden herpes, wind up with li’l eating machines… can’t win, sometimes.
Anyway! I hope that’s enough to get the conversation going. What’s infecting YOUR garden, and how do you cope?
I’ll be leaving for the farmer’s market and groceries just about the time this auto-publishes, but I’ll be back to chat once the food is properly stowed!
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