Weeds that give up?

[MINESAPINT]

I heard it said last night on the Gardenerning programme (Sarah Raven) that a field full of bracken was consistently mowed until it died off. I have heard this from time to time about various weeds. Keep hoeing & mowing and eventually they lose the will to live. Is anyone aware of which weeds will finally give in? In particular I am overrun with creeping buttercup, creeping thistle, dandelions, docks, nettles and wick grass.

[Millymollymandy]

It is true to a certain extent. We removed a ratty looking conifer from our front garden about 18 months ago and the only things that were growing underneath it were ivy and nettles. Since then many other weeds appeared too but also somehow grass started to colonise and now there is sunshine in this place the ivy is disappearing and the constant mowing has now reduced it to 50% grass/50% weeds. Hopefully in a couple of years it will be about 70-80% grass (that's about as much as can be expected which suits me fine).

I also find that if you keep hoeing off bindweed it does eventually start to reduce, but we are talking doing this over quite a few years!

[Peggy Sue]

Ah the curse of bindweed! I was hoping that oneday it would give up so you have brightened up my day. I am now happy to perservere for several years rather than resort to roundup.

I was beginning to wonder if it was like comfrey, the more you try to pull it up the faster it grows (which I don't mind now I realise comfrey is a good thing...but I really don't want that to happen to the bind weed!)

[Thomzo]

Hi
Stinging nettles also give up eventually if mowed regularly. I guess if you keep removing the leaves low enough down then the roots won't get enough food.

Zoe

[MINESAPINT]

I planted Comfrey in a corner of my veg patch without being fully aware of the consequences. I am now having to learn to live with it spring up everywhere.

[Peggy Sue]

My experience with nettles is that they come back stronger, with a harsher sting!

I had no idea the purpel flowers in my garden were comfrey when I moved in, they were quite under control though. I decided to chage a border to a herb boarder and pull up the purple flowers in that bit to stop them dwarfingmy herbs- thats when they took revenge. Now I ahve a garden full of comfrey
Apparently comfrey spreads aggressively if you try to rid it- now I know!
However I make loads of stinky comfrey tea for the tomatoes who appreciate it greatly

[Merry]

Is this true of all types of comfrey I wonder - -
`Cos I`ve got a comfrey bed of half a dozen plants that I`ve cropped for a couple of years and I`ve still only got half a dozen plants.

[Peggy Sue]

The seed suppliers/plant suppliers sell Russian comfrey that is bred not to spread - you may have that type- I clearly haven't!!

[DominicJ]

All of them will eventualy, even Japanese knotweed.

Think of it like a plant being killed off by weeds that keep shading it, except its a weed being killed by the grass that keeps shading it.

The key is doing it aggressivly and constantly, if you leave them alone for 3 weeks of warm and rainy weather, they'll be back at full strength and the last few months will have been wasted.

[AXJ]

The best thing to kill Knotweed organically in my experience is Convolvulus arvensis (bindweed). Over a number of years in my garden in London I tried systemic weedkillers, not a chance, and also killed the other plants (this was an area I had allowed to go wild). So one spring I allowed a competition between the previously knocked back (by weed killer) knot weed and the bindweed. The bindweed won hands down, totally smothered it. Nice pretty flowers as well.

[Tom Kirk]

Hi All

We had alot of docks in our field at one point (horses would only eat the grass) so they thrived! making our fields look untidy! We kept on mowing them and now we are nearly dock free! so I think that mowing them works with docks!
Also we had a little patch of nettles in the garden and after mowing them a few times they soon got the idea!

Thanks
Tom

[LBR]

My SO swears by digging up weeds during a waning moon. He figures out the dates for cutting hair so it will grow, cutting toenails so they won't, planting things, putting in posts, etc. It's rather Greek to me, but if it interests you, there are almanacs on the web for reckoning such things.

[Mainer in Exile]

My bindweed problem went away when I made up my mind that it is a feed crop to be harvested for rabbit and chicken feed, rather than a weed to be eliminated. I've done the same with dock, nettles, and dandelion as well. I like the permaculture philosophy of looking at problems as a possible source of assets.