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By definition, weeds are plants growing at a place we don’t want them. In other words, the battle lines are evident in every garden. Who is winning is the question?

I realize that it’s August and soon to be September and we have been in the garden since March or April. Our memories of being cooped up for the winter have faded. Our motivation is almost inversely proportional to the sweat on our brow.

Yet we are at critical time if you wish to win the battle against weeds. The secret on annual weeds, and we have legions of them, is to prevent them from going to seed. Sure, you have a major long lasting reservoir of weed seeds anywhere you garden, but why add more?

With perennial weeds, if you can send them into the dormant season under stress, you can slowly gain the upper hand. To control any weed, now is the time to pull, cultivate, smother, mow or use one of the safer herbicides.

Deep cultivation will bring a new multitude of weed seeds to the surface. It’s best to just scratch. I have also found that with something like roundup it’s not once and done.

I realize that there have been a few generations between the cursed exit from the Garden of Eden and now. We talk about native plants but I’ll be darned if I have heard much about native weeds.

Many of our worst offenders have been introduced either as ornamentals or by accidents of commerce. Weedy introduced plants can be a scourge because they came without their natural enemies and thus grow uninhibited.

Maybe the worst perennial weed that has thrived since before I was born is the Canada thistle. If you are not familiar with it, you should fall to your knees and give thanks.

If you are, maybe I can offer a little primer on it. Fight it. Fight it! Fight it!! If you see it, pull it or spray it. If it is at a spot you can’t spray, a rubber glove inside a cloth glove soaked in contact herbicide can localize the application.

You say you have tried that and it doesn’t work. The secret is to wear it out. Maybe that’s five or ten or more fight its. It seems that when you pull one, two come back. The same thing seems to happen with early season herbicides.

By the time you first see it, the plant has developed a massive underground root system. A vigilant removal of top growth will slowly weaken the root and the most critical time is now, as the plants starts to move food from the tops to the roots.

If there are no tops, there is no food to send down. It the top leaves get hit now with a translocating herbicide, like roundup, some of it will get to the roots which is a plus, but not a once and done solution.

The spread of weed problems like mile-a-minute weed, poison hemlock and wild cucumber appear to be completely seed dependent. If you spot them, don’t let them get a foothold. Unfortunately, birds will move the seeds of these.

Nowhere have I won the weed battle, but there are places where I have the upper hand and spend little time. At other places, I have just begun to fight.

Years ago when I planted my large hillside bank with shrubs, I included a sizable area of large-flowered, perennial hibiscus. Colors included red, white, shades of pink and bi-colors.

They are easy and tough for any sunny location and performed well except for one year. That year featured a massive attack by a black version of something like a cucumber beetle.

I didn’t spray, just muttered a bit and happily have not seen even a hint of a repeat. I just chalked that up to the head scratchers that frequently visit my garden efforts.

There are only three things one needs to know about this hibiscus. They die back to the ground each winter and often do not emerge from the ground until mid-May in the spring. For appearance, remove the dead stems of the previous year. I do this when I see new growth coming.

Practice number three is the motivation for these words and will appear by the time I finish.

Last year, as my interest in bird watching increased, I decided to add more berried plants to my bank. Since it was already full, I cast an evil eye and it landed on the hibiscus. They were carefully dug out and removed. I added the appropriate selection of native viburnum.

I forgot about seed. The hibiscus roared back with a vengeance seldom seen. They are spectacular. If I were an amateur plant breeder I would be cheering some of the colors.

When I’m brave enough to wade in there I can find the viburnums. The real plus is that the area is now so thick, the weeds can’t compete. I’ll let the battle rage.

Now to thought number three which violates my strongest held garden practice. Repeating again, long term plants grown lean and mean (fertilizer and water) will outlive and out perform their fat and happy relatives.

Over time, I have discovered that when these hibiscus are done flowering, if you prune up to half their growth away, fertilize and keep on the moist side, they will re-sprout and bloom again. I also believe that the recent introductions are more likely to rebloom.

As a teenager, it didn’t work with my parents. But now that I’m a grandfather, I guess it is all right to break the rules once in a while. It’s ok with hibiscus, too.

Sometimes I wonder if the hair follicles from my diminishing crop of graying hair are beginning to penetrate my brain, causing me difficulty understanding some things in our modern world. That sentence might make sense only it you read all of this.

Every serious gardener should visit the trial gardens at Landisville. This plant trial, sponsored by Penn State Extension and aided by the Lancaster County Master Gardeners and the greenhouse industry, is one of the best in the country.

The large, long running trial focuses on annuals and in the last several years has increased its work with vegetables. The only wrinkle is that everything is grown in pots. They switched to pots several years ago after they feared that years of growing several acres of flowers in the same spot in their heavy soil had created enough disease problems to distort the trial results.

Time spent there will let you see which, of the say petunias or geraniums or whatever, do best in our growing conditions, There will be hundreds of pots of each of the first two. I spend more time looking at the new introductions and the vegetables.

The Penn State Research Farm is located just a bit north and west of Landisville. If you get the basics of the last sentence into Google you should find enough directions to get you there. A call to the Lancaster County Extension at 394-6851 would also get you the needed information.

There are other ways to increase you plant savvy. Our area abounds in garden tours and professional gardens within easy driving distance. Better yet, just keep your eyes open and when you see a plant that you like, find out what it is and observe what it likes.

Garden magazines are also great sources of information about plants and garden practices. I find most of the material presented to be objective, beneficial and from reliable sources.

However, in these economic times, the magazines may have reduced staff or at least are looking for inexpensive material. Some of the larger marketers (middlemen) in the greenhouse industry have spotted this and will use their paid staff to write promotional material for their products, which is then sent to the magazine editors.

Occasionally I read an article and think, "Should ask my plant doctor if this plant (product) is right for my garden?" This bothers me.

Often times we have problem areas in our landscapes. A steep bank we feel that we are taking our life into our own hands to mow, a shady area under trees, a small bed bordered by concrete, to name a few. What to do? Groundcovers are a way to go.

I would define a groundcover as a low growing, quickly spreading or clumping perennial, either herbaceous or shrubby, that requires little maintenance.

Why are we afraid of groundcovers? The reason they are so effective-their quick growth makes them a bit thuggish in a small garden with great soil and moisture.

Two stories. I've admired the pink evening primrose in our flowerbed below the store for years. When we moved home, and I bought my grandmother's home I planted one behind the house. The first spring it was lovely. Cup-shaped light pink flowers with darker veins bloomed their hearts out in the afternoon and evening. That summer, I noticed it running further down. This year I am pulling it out of my front yard. Why is it so lovely at the store and beating up the rest of my flowers at home? At the store it is constrained by similarly aggressive Heliopsis, coneflowers, and a stone walkway on either side. At home it thrives with my laissaiz faire gardening attitude and less thuiggish neighbors.

While visiting Chanticleer this summer, we noted the beauty of the 'Firecracker' lysimachia. Its delicate yellow flowers atop bronze-purple foliage were striking. However we also realized that it was planted in concrete islands in a parking lot. This beauty will run if given half a chance.

There are also a lot of wonderful groundcovers that are not so aggressive. Creeping thyme, Scotch Moss, mazus, some of the smaller veronicas and leptinella are all wonderful little gems that will spread slowly, and will allow mild foot traffic making them good choices between stepping stones, or in an area too small for grass.

Banks planted with the shubby 'Lo Grow' sumac are relatively care free and look wonderful in the fall when the leaves turn a burnished orange. Our bank coming up to the store is lined with mountain pink, an evergreen native phlox with beautiful pink, purple and white hues for a good month in the spring.

Under trees where it is too shady for grass or exposed roots making mowing treacherous, sweet woodruff, lamium, epimediums, ajuga, periwinkle, or even English ivy are good solutions.

One man's invasive plant - another man's wonderful groundcover.

There are no big thoughts or great events that will flow in the paragraphs that follow, but hopefully a collection of a few smaller observations from this week that will be a bit helpful.

Several days ago someone brought me a large stem from a lilac bush. An archeologist might have better studied it than someone who grows things in the dirt. It was dead, with lots of insect borings and an ample crop of lichens to prove it.

After cutting out the dead stems the re-growth was not happy. Could it be the lichen growth on the old that was infecting the new growth? That answer is definitely no.

A bit of probing identified that the old bush had been a favorite long time roost for a significant number of regular birds. Doing what birds often do when they sit, I wondered if an accumulation of that had brought the soil to levels that made the plant unhappy, Possible, but I doubt it.

Then it was mentioned that there were white spots on it. That might suggest a good case of scale (a tough insect) that could be a big problem. They seem to like lilacs. A dose or two of horticultural oil or soapy water is about the only attack plan. They resist most insecticides but will succumb to clogged breathing pores from the above treatment.

Now might be a time to mention pruning multi-stemmed shrubs. A great approach is to remove some of the older stems on a regular basis. I can’t think of a single plant that produces stems that have great ornamental value by their seventh birthday. Twig dogwoods have their best winter color on new growth, so stems more than two years old are unappealing.

Another guideline to follow is that if the problem is seen on the new growth, you should look for insects. If it is on the older leaves, it is possibly nutrition or disease.

On the disease front, I was surprised at the slow recovery of the greenness of my lawn. Seems that this is a great weather year for grass fungus. Some suggest that the more fertilizer, more water, more happy the yard, the worse the problem. Mine is none of that and is pretty bad.

Waiting is the best approach to this problem. It will grow out of it when temperatures, moisture and humidity realign to the green grass mode. More water and fertilizer may aggravate the problem. Fungicides seem to have a fleeting influence, so are hardly worth the effort.

Speaking of water, a forceful closing to this sermon is needed. It rained. It rained a lot. We had over five inches and much of it went into the ground. Unless you had a whole lot less, and I doubt it, I offer the following.

If you have picked up the water hose since it rained you are watering way too much. I’m even still looking for a container that needs water. Right now, two or three days after the last storm, the emphasis is still on observation. Container watering may begin again later today or tomorrow.

In my vegetable garden the water is off and will remain off for a long time, hopefully the rest of the growing season. Now the attention is to the bounty of the harvest and the weeds that are trying to thrive with the newfound moisture. Right now a chunk of the garden’s first cantaloupe is waiting on the kitchen table. See you!