Chicken bald back

[BlueSilver]

Hurrah for a wet spring! I knew the bane of my from garden would return, so I started putting down mulch. Sadly it was nowhere near thick enough, and due to health issues, the ground elder came back with a vengeance. It's up to my shins now. there aren't enough of those icons to express my irritation. So I am taking the drastic method of sacrificing list of the small plants in the front and just hoeing off the green bits above ground to ground level, then covering the lot in a very thick mulch if composted manure and wood chips. I am considering putting down cardboard too but I literally have 15 bags of material outside so it should do it. The front garden will be nowt but rosebushes and poppies this year but I can deal with that.

 

Romans, you may have given us irrigation, roads, a freshwater system (you know the sketch) but I shan't forgive them on the ground elder.

[Olly]

I sympathise, never knew it came from the Romans, that's interesting!

 

My personal curse is not ground elder, but bramble and ash saplings. The latter seem to appear overnight at 18" tall, they're invisible until they are too big to dig out easily. I end up excavating the root and cutting the stem in half below ground level.

[BlueSilver]

Oh yep, the ash saplings are in the back, and they're everywhere. I will need to do a proper pulling session of those this week or, as you say, nightmare ensues.

 

I have done a bit of the front garden, very slowly. I can't get every s"Ooops, word censored!" of the stuff out from in between plants but I may be able to keep on top of it once I put the mulch down.

[Guest]

Sycamore is my pet hate oh and bind weed although bindweed is easy to kill by nuking it but damned sycamores are a wretched nuisance

[Space Chick]

Our issues are brambles and mares tail

[dancing cloud]

Bramble, nettles and thistles here. If anyone ever finds a use for them, we'll be quids in!

 

Lots of baby (and not so baby) ash too - no sign of die-back.

[sjp]

nettles docks , thistles, couch grass and mare tail

mares tail through I've only just inherited and so far is responding to the weed killer the thistles and docks start to die but the start to grow through the weed killer couch grass I'll never beat

[BlueSilver]

My Cunning Plan seems to be working, at least managed to cover most of the elder once I cut it all down to ground level, piled the manure on, topped with wood chip. I think I will need more of the same piled on in fall but so far so good. ALL THE MULCHING!

[Valkyrie]

Ground elder can be eaten like spinach. I remember a long time ago someone complaining that it was so delicious that she'd wiped it out in her garden! We did have it here but when we altered our veggie patch and removed the horrible tarry sleepers hubby must have managed to remove all the roots because it never came back. Bindweed and yes sycamore, poxy oaks, hawthorns and ash trees - ooh and willow. Also had a problem with some sort of pretty purple vetch that the bees loved but my goodness the seeds pinged everywhere. Chooks seem to have scrabbled that to oblivion except for the bits they can't reach.

 

Oh and I curse the Romans for the big snails that Hugh Fearlessly eats it all has cooked before. I am happy to let the thrushes gobble those up because I can't bear the chewy things!

[Cat tails]

I absolutely feel your pain! The gardener that sometimes does a few chores in my garden has a very good and rather fail safe solution!

 

Move out...

 

As that isn't really an option for me, I tackled the ground elder myself. So far it has been quite successful, although it was incredibly labour intensive.

I got on all fours and removed every bit of root by hand, by digging up and going over every bit of earth for about 40 cm deep. Did this about three weeks ago and so far have had very little ground elder growing back.

Every shoot that does peek through the earth, I dig out by hand. Using tools is not really an option, because it will only break down the roots in small fragments.

 

I know it will come back with vengeance eventually (I'm fearing the summer holidays...). But for now, I'm rather ground elder free.