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Show Backyard Gardener " By PATRICK DENTON Copley News Service Among the most persistent persis-tent pests with which backyard back-yard gardeners must contend con-tend upon occasion is ' chickweed, a frustrating and infuriating invader of our peaceful domains. After several long sessions ses-sions crouched over, carefully care-fully lifting chickweed plants from garden beds, the gardener enjoys a very short-lived satisfaction with the perfectly clean, neat and tidy appearance of his weeded plot. This is because after just a few days, a whole new, boorishly boorish-ly vigorous crop of chickweed inevitably comes popping up, once again to pollute the fine appearance ap-pearance of his garden. Now it should be admitted admit-ted that chickweed isn't all bad. It does have its uses. From time to time we've garnished our salads with r chickweed and found it - quite tasty. Chickens and rabbits will gobble it up with alacrity. And like many other wild plants, it has its adherents who claim chickweed, eaten raw or cooked like spinach, or used in the form of tea, a lotion or poultice, soothes and heals all types of external ex-ternal and internal irritations. irrita-tions. Chickweed baths are supposed to be soothing, too. ;'. In any event, nature has contrived fo" assure a continuing con-tinuing supply of the stuff, ' usually far more than we wish to cope with. One of the reasons for this lies in the nature of its roots. I've read that chickweed is a very easy weed to remove re-move as it pulls up with little lit-tle effort unlike certain long, fleshy-rooted weeds like dandelion and thistle. But while the plant breaks off easily, it is actually quite difficult to remove the roots which, left in the ground, develop new plants in short order. That's not all. Mother Nature has another clever trick for ensuring the survival sur-vival of this weed, which is, after all, one of her children. chil-dren. Unlike most of the seeds we sow, like radish and lettuce, chickweed seeds do not germinate all at once. Some may germinate germi-nate in a week, some in a month, some in six months and some may take a year or more. In this way, even if one batch of plants is demolished demol-ished by the gardener's hoe, bad weather, bugs or animals, there will be several sev-eral more batches coming along later to replace them. So one answer to the weed problem, and a critical criti-cal one, is to never allow your weeds to go to seed. For chickweed, this means continuing the weeding operation op-eration well into fall, when this hardy specimen is still coming up and scattering its seeds to germinate and plague us all through the next year. Especially for older gardeners gar-deners and for those whose That pesky chickweed time or energies are limited, limit-ed, the delayed-action germination ger-mination of certain weeds is a very disconcerting problem. There is help though, with a product that kills weed seeds as they germinate. Once the plot is cleaned of weeds, the product prod-uct will prevent other seeds (including flower or vegetable seeds, it must be noted) from germinating for a season. These products are sold . usually under the name granular weed preventer, under different brand labels. la-bels. While they may be a boon for the desperate, they do have their disadvantages. disad-vantages. For one thing, the plot must be thoroughly thorough-ly weeded before treatment, treat-ment, for the granules will not kill the growing plants. Another point is that the product has no effect on the roots of perennial weeds. And labels have to be very carefully read, for certain of the chemicals used in these products should not be used on some soil types, and others, used at high rates, will kill all vegetation. A non-chemical approach ap-proach to beating chickweed involves keeping keep-ing at the weeding, loosening loosen-ing the soil as you work so the roots are removed as you pull. Get them before they go to seed. And when an infected plot is emptied of flowers or vegetables, cover it with either a black plastic or some mulch for as long as possible. |