Sometimes it’S warfare in the garden. Be armed and ready!

KNOW THINE ENEMY!

by Peter W. Gribble
”Ah! Two for one”, I thought, spotting the unknown, pretty little plant nestled alongside the larger perennial with the ID tag bought at a garden center. It had basal leaves lyrate (deeply divided with opposite paired lobes with a larger lobe at the end) in a loose rosette with a shy short stem of minuscule white, four-petal flowers blooming. The whole plant was an inch tall and looked cute and demure. I let it live.

Woe unto thee, oh, foolish gardener!

There was no excuse. I have enough gardening reference books. I should’ve looked it up.

Not that it would have helped. Even subsequent research gave no warning of this inch tall plant’s athletic propensity to shot-put its seeds six or more feet away from the mother plant, nor revealed its plucky fortitude to flower during winter months. Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers merely stated it is a member of the mustard family and closely related to watercress. Only two words (one for each of the two varieties mentioned) “throughout” and “widespread” hinted at its seven-league boots ability to spread.

Said cute, demure plant is bittercress or cuckoo-flower or, tellingly: “blisterweed.” The excellent reference Plants of Coastal British Columbia (Lone Pine Publishers. 1994) identified it more clearly: Cardamine occidentalis or Western Bittercress.

And the land shall be visited with plagues of blisterweed.

After sending its progeny aloft, the original plant died, but before the end of the season bittercress was popping up in ever-widening circles from the original plant’s location. The following season I noticed it with increasing frequency in outdoor potted plants at garden centres and regretted my charity in letting it thrive. By this time, the bittercress invasion in my garden was in quick march.

And there shall be wars and species invasions of diverse sorts.

There comes a time in the life of every self-respecting gardener when you have no choice but to declare war. It’s an ongoing, relentless engagement bounded by spring-summer-fall running battles capped by wintry truces. In ancient times across most human cultures, war was a distinctly seasonal activity. No less so in gardens, but they who start their campaigns early have the jump on their adversaries.

Bittercress may flower in January and February but there are few pollinators about during cold weather. A few warm days in February rectifies this, so don’t wait to pull weeds: “See ‘em, pull ‘em.”

As the season advances bittercress plants seem to synchronize their spring-flowering possibly because each patch germinated at the same time. This helps you pull up a lot more since patches are easier to map once you start. During the spring, in moist ground, bittercress comes out like a charm, roots and all, by gently tugging the flowering stem. Once an area is cleared there’s the satisfaction of a skirmish truly won.

Dandelions are lovely and useful (bees love ‘em) in a meadow - not so much in your little garden.

And the first horseman shall be known as Dandelion.

War is a complicated state especially if you’re fighting on multiple fronts. In garden or battlefield, waves of attack can occur as enemies regroup, reseed, and change with the seasonal advance. Fresh new recruits follow bittercress’ first onslaught. Don’t be lulled into reducing your level of engagement to “a limited police action.” Not when the Golden Hoards of Genghis, the Dandelion, are about to descend.

Taraxacum officinale or the common dandelion can also bloom as early as January and to the vigilant campaigner that first yellow dandelion peeking up through the snow is the signal the sorties have recommenced. This particular opponent can be turned to advantage if there’s time, space, and resources. Dandelion roots, dug in the fall, dried and ground, are a coffee substitute. Thousands of flower heads cleaned and plucked of their sepals and calyxes make dandelion wine and in the spring, the new leaves are tender and delicious in salads.

Though if a scorched earth policy is pursued where dandelions are concerned, the handled two-tined weeder is the sole weapon available. The tines aren’t long enough to get the whole root of the more established plant but it is sufficient to knock dandelion back for at least a month. Return to the battlefield at that time to flush them out from their foxholes again with the weeder. Each year there will be fewer. Take the word of an old campaigner.

Morning-Glory — Lovely to look at, a challenge to be rid of.

And the second horseman shall be called Morning-Glory.

A few weeks after dandelion’s D-day, morning-glory is easier to spy. It’s been creeping up covertly all along but now it’s primed for the big push.

There are no uses for Convolvulvus arvensis or Field Bindweed or Morning-Glory. Plants of Coastal British Columbia, always quick to enumerate the various medicinal and other uses First Nations peoples and others have for each plant, list none and pulls no punches in declaring morning-glory “a pernicious weed.”

Roots are long and white and tunnel just below the surface of the soil in my garden. But Plants mentions “deep rhizomes,” which I’ve yet to find. I’m afraid to dig deeper.

Consistently ripping out the top growth slowly exhausts the roots. It’s hard to determine because it’s so lush but each year as I pull up morning-glory – like dandelion – there seems to be a little less each year.

Buttercups can cause blisters and prevents the growth of clover. Do you need that?

Beware the harlot Buttercup for she will ravage Clover.

Buttercup or Ranunculus repens is the pervasive nuisance of early June. It resorts to chemical warfare no longer available to gardeners in the lower mainland. Buttercup can produce blisters on the skin and has recently been found to prevent clover – a great nitrogen fixer in the soil – from growing. Again the two-tined weeder is the only resource to use since herbicide, quite rightly, has been banned.

Consider it as one of the Vienna Botanical Conventions of Garden Warfare. Start digging up buttercup as soon as you can in the spring before the blasted stuff has a chance to flower. The seeds remain viable in the soil for many years – like mines waiting to be detonated.

And chestnuts shall be sown in thy veggie patch.

And then there are the self-serving mercenaries. Squirrels. Every season when I dig or weed I find buried peanuts. There’s no worry as these can only be store-bought peanuts roasted in their shells and incapable of germinating. It was the sudden influx of chestnut trees sprouting up in the oddest places that baffled me. No chestnuts exist in the vicinity, but every year I have to pull up twenty to forty baby chestnut trees.

Sadly, these are horse chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum) as far as I can determine. If they were sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa) I might have let one or two grow on to maturity. Fall surveillance now reveals squirrels are burying their autumn plunder in behind-the-lines, post-winter caches.

Blessed are they who tend the gardens of the Lord for their labors shall blow away dandelion and blisterweed like so much chaff.

The fight continues until a tentative victory can be declared even if the only truce is the one at the end of each day. “Tentative” because there are still seeds out there “blowing in the wind,” birds flying overhead pooping surprises onto the soil, yet another generation of squirrels, roots unseen tendrilling underground and seeds lurking dormant poised for a spring years off.

Victory celebrates the peace and cessation of struggle while producing a garden of glorious colour and abundant harvests.

But it is an uneasy peace.