Sandra Mason: Are the weeds winning in your garden?

Why do the plants we don't want appear to grow better than the plants we do want? Is it just nature's way of rebelling against our desire for orderliness? Are our gardens being overtaken by anarchists?

Realize we are outnumbered. Just one lambsquarter plant can produce 72,450 seeds in one growing season. If we all devoured lambsquarter or were awestruck at its beauty, this information would be good news. Perhaps we should be shifting our culinary cravings and aesthetic preferences.

But for most of us, weeds compete with our garden plants for light, nutrients and water.

Familiar weeds possess a few common attributes. They go through their life cycle rapidly, flower quickly, produce vast quantities of seeds and have some seed adaptation for travel by wind, water or animals. By midsummer, weeds can produce a waist-high fortress and you're ready to surrender.

As garden author Roger Swain says, "there are no pacifist gardeners." Once you decide to grow anything, whether it's for food or beauty, you will at one time or another find yourself in literal hand-to-hand combat with weeds.

The battleground is bare soil. Bare spots in the lawn next to the driveway. A new tilled garden bed is prime area for weeds to grow. Weed seeds that were dormant for years now have open territory to conquer.

Once you have decided a plant is a weed, your first task is to identify the plant. Knowledge of a plant's life cycle is the key to control. Annuals such as crabgrass, foxtail, lambsquarter and buttonweed live one growing season and must come back each year from seed. Biennials such as burdock and poison hemlock live two years producing the seed in the second year.

With perennials such as dandelions, creeping Charlie and quackgrass, the same plant comes back each year and they also produce seed. Weed identification websites include turf.uiuc.edu/weed_web/index.htm and weeds.cropsci.illinois.edu/weedid.htm Or bring plant samples to our office and we can help you.

"Identifying Weeds in Midwestern Turf and Landscapes" is a great booklet for $8.50 available through University of Illinois Publications. Go to pubsplus.illinois.edu/ or call 800-345-6087.

Got weeds? Here are some weed-management options.

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Sandra Mason: Are the weeds winning in your garden?