You’ve done it. You’ve just dug up all the weeds in your garden. But inside a week, they’re back. How is this possible? Why are weeds so resilient? Read on to find out more.
Where Do Weeds Come From?
Weed seeds can come into your garden from anywhere – via the wind, via bird droppings, on the soles of shoes, on dog fur, and so on. Stopping them from getting into the garden is impossible. But you can try to make sure they don’t establish themselves.
Weeds are very difficult to eliminate once they’re established, and different weeds survive and regrow in different ways, meaning there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
Why Do Weeds Grow So Fast?
Weeds grow so fast because they’ve evolved to do so. Japanese knotweed can grow up to 10cm per day, for example. Other weeds put out vast quantities of seeds to ensure continued survival: dandelions can produce up to 15,000 per plant!
Weeds have also developed the ability to grow in all sorts of conditions, many of which would be inhospitable to other plants. Part of this might involve having seeds that can lie dormant until conditions improve – milk thistle seeds can do this for up to nine years! This means that you could pull out every visible weed in your garden and have new ones sprouting within a week.
How to Kill Weeds
The only surefire way to kill a weed is to completely remove it from your garden. Roots, stem, flower, all of it gone. That way, you can be sure it won’t come back.
It’s much easier to uproot a dead plant than a live one. So, it’s therefore recommended to spray the weeds you encounter with weedkiller. Once they’ve dried up and died, pull them out!
Beware: you have to pull the roots out as well, otherwise the plant could very easily grow back. Japanese knotweed can grow back from small pieces of rhizome in the soil, for example, meaning it has to be eliminated very thoroughly if you don’t want it to return.
The natural resilience of weeds is what makes them so hard to get rid of. If you’re struggling with weeds in your garden, we’d be happy to help remove them – just get in touch!
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READ MORE: How to Prevent Weeds from Growing
Is It Japanese Knotweed?