Weeds don't stop growing in the winter

By DAVID BARE
Media General News Service

Weeds never sleep.

A disconcerting - but true - thought.

Just when you think that it's time to pop on the old slippers and curl up with a good book, they appear.

If you don't believe me, take a look at any patch of bare ground in the vegetable garden.

It's not so bare.

Winter weeds are doing their thing, sprawling out, rooting in and blooming. Yes, blooming.

A quick perusal of my garden recently turned up bittercress in full bloom and fat buds on henbit.

The days of unseasonably warm weather allowed these two to spill seed left and right.

But that's their job - to procreate and cover bare ground - and they do it exceptionally well. The way they do it is through seeds.

Lots of seeds.

Bittercress is one of many weeds in the mustard family. It is ubiquitous, able to find a spot in the garden, lawn or even a sidewalk crack where it can sink its roots and grab hold of a half-teaspoon of soil.

It has leaves arranged in a basal rosette - a circular arrangement held flat on the ground. Each leaf is composed of about four pairs of opposite leaflets and a diamond-shaped terminal leaf.

With the slightest hint of warmth, it begins to bloom down in the crown; the stem eventually rises to distribute seed. The blossoms are tiny white flecks of petal. If you were to examine them with a magnifying glass, you could see that there are four petals, the standard number for mustard-family plants. The same is true of broccoli and cabbage. In any other season, this plant would be lost among the many, but I mention it because of its early bloom and the relatively long seedpods that follow.

Individual flowers are no larger than the mark produced by dotting a pencil on paper, but the seedpods can be an inch long.

Henbit and chickweed have more in common than the poultry reference in their names. They are winter bloomers and creep and root as they go.

They get around by spreading their seed in the cool weather and by summer have virtually disappeared.

Or perhaps I should say visually disappeared. Their progeny is alive and well and waiting for cooler weather to sprout in greater - much greater - numbers.

Chickweeds are many and some are even desirable wildflowers. The star-shaped woodland flowers of early spring have a particular charm to them. Those in the lawn and garden have a bit less to offer. Chickweed forms a mat and attaches itself to the ground as if pinned there, rooting at just about every stem segment. When it is pulled, it often comes apart, leaving a piece to carry on the legacy.

Chickweed is said to be favored by birds and this is where the name arose.

Once very long ago, I kept finches and giving them a piece of chickweed would send them into a delirious ecstasy. But I guess that if you live in a little cage, it doesn't take much.

Chickweed is in the pink family, the same group that gives us carnations.

Henbit is a mint-family plant, a big group that includes sage, beebalm, basil and many others. The square stems and hooded flowers with a lower lip are indicators of their alliance. Henbit has round, scalloped leaves. The branching plants are loosely sprawling. At the top of the plant, the leaves encircle the stem but lower leaves have stems of their own. Lavender-purple flowers protrude from the leaf bases at the top of the plant.

Red or purple dead nettle, a similar weed, also blooms at this time. Dead nettle is a more substantial plant, with triangular leaves that are rough textured. Early in the season the uppermost leaves are often a bronze-purple color. They appear stacked upon each other. Above and beneath these leaves are the flowers. The whole thing gives the appearance of a poorly formed flower spike, as if it wanted to be showy but couldn't quite pull it off.

It makes up for this in its seed production. These plants can often be found in crevices along sidewalks and walls where they are afforded some protection and benefit from the solar heat that the wall releases overnight. Plants in these positions often bloom a little earlier, which means that they set seed a little earlier, and that is what it's all about for these guys.

If you don't want them, this is the time to get after them.

Because they are all annuals, once they have set seed they die and let their children take up the charge. The trick is to get them before they set seed. Herbicides are slow in cool weather and are not really necessary to control annual weeds. A little time behind the hoe will keep those weeding muscles from seizing up on you over the winter. Ignore weeds, and they will be tenfold come autumn.

Those slippers and that book can wait until nightfall.