Oops!
Article and photo by Monika Smith
With July over, the surprises kept on coming. My bounteous fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) was done and I’m hoping that the little green shoots will mature later on. The great showing of sticky geranium (Geranium viscosissimum) is now brown leaves and seed pods. Plants bloomed much earlier than last year. My beds of common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) started to bloom mid-July. The giant hyssops (Agastache foeniculum) are magnificent and the licorice smell is delicious. More paintbrushes (Castilleja sp) popped up and have gotten close to the candy apple red colour I love; they look like they can hold on for a while. Harebells (Campulana alaskana) and blanket flowers (Gaillardia aristata) have shown up and hopefully will continue to bloom throughout the summer. This is a very different showing from last year.
Weeds! I have a veritable list of who’s who of noxious plants this year. The Alberta government has a website that has 007 warrants out. Most I can find on the various lists (and good images) posted online. However, weeds are sneaky and the ones that do well have taken over the native varieties, so they all get tarred with the same brush. Canada thistles (Cirsium arvense) – bad. Our native hooker’s thistle (Cirsium hookerianum) – good. Hooker’s is a much nicer plant that doesn’t colonize and is magnificent as an architectural plant but gets eradicated along with the Canada thistle.
Dealing with deadly beauties? Or just weeds? Pull them before they bloom. Bother them without going to chemical warfare.
What have I dealt with? Scentless chamomile (Tripleurospermum inodorum), which looks like the real thing, but it is noxious. Leave the scrappy pineapple weed (Matricaria discoidea) alone as it smells wonderful and can be used for tea. Another visitor? Of all things, alfalfa! This plant is in the wrong place. A good, high-protein crop for animal feed; but how did it get here? So, it got pulled. I’ve also let the strawberry spinach (or lettuce, Chenopodium capitatum) roam. It’s an annual, spread by seed, and I’m seeing a drift of plants from the north side of my property to the south. The fruit are astonishing this year and I braved eating one. It doesn’t have much flavour and I didn’t die. Our modern taste buds have been trained for sweet and this doesn’t have it. That said, my wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) are bountiful. Commercial strawberries will never equal that flavour. Amazingly, I don’t have a battalion of squirrels or other critters on site. My luck.
The oopsie! With so many weeds this year, I pulled a lot. Many I knew. If I don’t know what it is, looks like a weed, and the flowers are puny: pull. It’s often hard to find references online. One tall plant looked scruffy, the emerging flower heads not that big, but something said, “wait.” I’m so glad I did. Otherwise, I would have lost—again—nice patches of smooth asters (Symphyotrichum laeve), rising to a great height and showing cute bundles of yellow-eyed, blue-petaled daisies. I’m trying to pay attention and learn some lessons.
Want to show your garden to a friendly pack of plant lovers, who strive to learn and exchange knowledge, discuss successes, and gain some shoulders to sob on with failure? Contact me! There is an opportunity to have a community seed/plant exchange, plus a harvest sale of veggies grown right here in Glendale. Interested? Again, contact me!
To get a handle on noxious plants, go to https://aaaf.ab.ca/uploads/pdf/Weed_ID_Guide_2017.pdf. You will be surprised by what is listed.
Until next time,
Monika’s Grove
Click here to the Glendale Community News home page for the latest Glendale community updates.
