… And to Pull Weeds
-
- November
- 20
I find this to be a particularly good time to pull garlic mustard, which is wildly invasive in the Hudson Valley.
It’s very easy to see now, still bright green against the brown leaves. It also comes up fairly easily, after all the rain we’ve had.
A closeup of a notched leaf.
Garlic mustard is a biennial. It’s much easier to pull now, in its first year, while it’s still small (similar to a violet plant). Otherwise, you have to pull it in mid-May, when it shoots up to 2 to 3 feet tall in no time.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a second to spare in the garden in May, so I’d much rather pull persistent weeds now, while it’s still fairly nice out and I want to be outside on warm days.
You want to reach down and grab it at ground level, to get all of the long white tap root. If you don’t get it all, it will be back next spring.
Here’s a post from last spring, with more on garlic mustard and photos in its second year.
So go pull some garlic mustard this weekend! It’s good exercise and very good for the environment.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:32 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
