What might these weeds be?

beckstrous

Hi All
I moved house recently and we are lucky enough to have four veg plots in the garden.
They were overgrown so I cleared and then dug them - it took ages but I am glad it is done!
One thing I have noticed is that on one of the beds, a carpet of little green weeds keeps appearing. They look a bit like salad cress, especially when I hoe or dig them away (as I can see the white roots with the small green leaves at the top). It seems to be mostly only on this one patch. I get rid of them and then a week later they reappear.
Does anyone know what this might be and how to stop it from happening?
I can post a pic later if need be!

billieboy_2

Could be "mind-your-own-business" (Soleirolia soleirolii) but without a picture difficult to know.

a11waysindebt

Has chicken manure been used there.

MUMMYTO2BOYS

Could be chickweed.

If you haven't got any veg in the beds yet and you don't mind using chemicals spray them with weedkiller then hoe them off when they've died back, wait for the next lot to appear and repeat the process.

beckstrous

Thank you for the helpful replies.

As for chicken manure - I am not sure - why do you ask? They did definitely put manure on as the neighbour told me, but I don't know what sort. From old labels I found, I think they had been growing tomatoes in there. It's very strange as the other three patches don't really have that much of this stuff but in this particular one it springs up in about a week.

I am a bit wary of using chemicals since we're doing the veg in there and I wanted to try to be organic (and safe!), but having said that, we do not intend to plant anything until next year.

I would really appreciate it if anyone could ID the weed - some pics are here on this blog (I could not work out how to embed them, sorry!)

http://popups112.blogspot.com/

Mimi_Arc_en_ciel

hi - they're chickweed

beckstrous

Thank you! I have read that some people use it as a herb! (I just wanna get rid of it...!)

CCP

If it is chickweed (and I'll take mommyme's word for it as I can't really tell from the photos), then yes, you can eat it, but I don't think it's got a lot of flavour - I've never tried it myself, though. If you know anyone with guinea pigs they'd probably be grateful for it - I've never met a guinea pig that didn't adore the stuff!

If you don't want to use chemicals (and I'm with you on that - I won't use chemicals on anything I'm going to eat) then all you can do is keep pulling it up - it will get the hint in the end!

Mojisola

I'm not sure from the photos but, at that stage, it doesn't really matter. Just keep hoeing and you'll get on top of them. You could use a flame gun - just the quickest pass with the flame with shrivel them up.

There will be thousands of seeds in the soil and everytime you dig it over you will bring more seeds to the surface which will germinate. If you want to get rid of as many as possible, you can keep doing this. If you're going to be growing from seed, it would be worth doing this.

If not, kill off the seedlings without disturbing the soil too much, plant carefully and spread mulch over the bare soil. That will reduce the number that germinate.

Whatever you do, catch the little devils before they flower. If they don't get the chance to set seed, they won't cause you problems in the future. There's an old country saying "One year's seeds, seven years of weeds".

beckstrous

Thanks folks. We will be growing from seed next year for some of our veg. I don't mind too much hoeing and digging them over once a week as it doesn't take that long. They definitely haven't flowered...they're quite small so far.

Phew!

Mimi_Arc_en_ciel

CCP wrote: »

If it is chickweed (and I'll take mommyme's word for it as I can't really tell from the photos)

Doint take myword for it lol was my OH :rotfl: