Hi all!
My front garden is large and relatively new, with plants <6mth old. We have had a warm autumn thus far (near Albury NSW) and I have had SO MANY weeds pop up over the last week. Lots of weed A and some of weed B. My garden is mostly natives which are doing quite well and I haven’t had many weeds until now. I have spent this morning digging them all out. Is this normal for autumn? There are some spaces still in my garden bed as I want to give my plants room to grow, and I do need to top up some mulch in the bed also. Any tips to keep the weeds at bay?? TIA
by olddmate
3 Comments
Unfortunately, these are both weeds from the daisy family. The seeds are numerous and designed to travel with the wind.
Removing them before they seed will stop them spreading on your property but if there’s badly maintained land nearby, they will keep appearing.
Honestly, go out each day and just pull them out. You’d be surprised at how much you can control them that way. Spend 5 to 10 minutes each day and you’ll stay on top of it. I did that with my new lawn and have not had a single weed in a while now. Putting the effort in now will save you down the track once the garden is developed.
The weeds in your shots are more than a few weeks old. Thats for taking shots of these ones though as it makes ID a lot easier.
A is common Thistle (a daisy) and is an annual.
B is Cape Weed (a daisy) can las a few years.
Both can be easily hand removed.
After the first rains is when the seeds start to germinate. Your soil will have a seed bank from the last several years of seeding. Daisy seeds spread by wind from neighboring properties or more distant locations, but generally don’t travel far (couple of m) before hitting the ground.
If you persistently hand weed, you will deplete the seed bank in your soil and eventually will only be managing the ‘blow ins’. That’s exactly what I have done and weeding is just an occasional thing. Sometimes as I am walking by, I just pull up all the tiny weeds I see and the jobs done in less that 2 min.
For larger weeds, you don’t need to pull them and disturb your soil. Use an old steak knife and cut the root below the highest green part. The roots will die off and decompose and aerate your soil.