The first plants to come up in spring are weeds, and among the weeds the earliest are usually the most prolific.
And the most prolific and fast growing of all are often shotweed and dandelions. For better or worse, many of us find them charming, which reduces our will to do the sensible thing and pull them up by their roots.
I’ve been enjoying tiny shotweed plants for the past month. They are small, delicate, and brave in the face of foul weather. But now they’ve started to flower, and I’d be a fool not to pull them before they go to seed.
That’s when shotweed stops being delicate and turns violent: These tiny white blooms turn to seeds fast. Then when you touch the plant, the seeds shoot out in every direction, and grow into more — many more! — shotweed plants.
Dandelions have a different strategy to foil us: They use their single deep taproot to evade our best efforts to pull them. Hand-pulling rarely works; you have to get a shovel under them to get that root out — or invest in some version of a Grampa’s weeder, which is easy and fun to use, but works only if the soil is soft.
The upside to dandelions is that some species of bees like them, and some humans think the greens and even the flowers are tasty. (Others think they’re bitter.)
Children like dandelions too, both when they flower, and when their puffball of seeds develops and invites little kids to blow them around. Undignified adults do this too, and it makes them smile.
Some seeds we ourselves planted last year — or even many years ago — continue to reseed themselves too, giving us perpetual crops of annual flowers and certain vegetables. Some of these are also already up, sometimes at surprising distances from where we planted them.
Last year a veritable forest of parsley sprang up by the front porch, which was handy. This year there’s another coming up near the back door.
Alyssum, poppies, and larkspur are also famous for reseeding themselves, with mostly happy results. If you’ve ever planted them, you will probably see their new offspring now.
Look before you dig: some are still so tiny you won’t see them unless you’re on your knees. Others, like love-in-a-mist and cosmos, will come along in the next couple of months. In all cases, you can dig them up and move them around or give them away while they’re small.
It takes a practiced eye to identify some of these tiny seedlings, so if you’re not sure what those babies will grow up to be, you can wait a bit until they reveal their nature.
Perennials (flowering plants that live for many years) are also sending up new shoots.
It used to be conventional wisdom to cut perennials back to the ground in the fall when they had finished blooming and were dying back. More recently, the advice has shifted to leaving the cleanup until spring so all that dead vegetation can provide winter homes and breeding sites for various insects and other critters, and some seedheads for hungry birds.
But for Japanese anemones the timing for a spring cleanup was problematic. By the time a good day for gardening came along, the new growth was already 4 or 5 inches tall, so cutting the dead stuff away without damaging the new growth required patient, surgical precision.
That inspired me to cut back the rest of the perennials now, before that problem was repeated. More study on this timing issue is now on my to-do list. What’s best for biodiversity and what’s within my capacity for patience? What should I do?
Gardening can be complicated.
Fortunately, here’s something else that’s coming up: TJ Johnson, the proprietor of Urban Futures Farm, will teach his annual two-part class on growing vegetables on March 15 and March 22. The cost is $60.
A lot of what he teaches is helpful in the shrubbery or the flower garden too. But no matter how much we learn, there’s no chance of perfection, only of progress with every new year of growth.
Let’s get started.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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marygentry
Thanks for this Jill. The garden reminds us that all of life is complicated, so we need to choose our complications well. Messing up on the right timing with pruning or planting may be disappointing but it rarely affects anyone else - so the aggravation as well as the let down is pretty much something we own. Maybe next year, I'll get it right. Just one more thing to look forward to. A problem I face more often these days with fall clean up is that by the time I get around to tackling it, either the weather has turned nasty or I'm just "done" with the garden and ready to hunker down by the fire with a book.
Saturday, March 8 Report this