Another weed that is risky to let get established in your yard is garlic mustard. The plant shoots up 1-3 feet high during its second year, and is easy to spot right now with its cluster of little white flowers. The flowers look decent enough, but a laissez faire approach will lead to this weed taking over, altering soil chemistry and crowding out other flowers. The garlicky smelling leaves are edible, especially when young, but you'll never eat enough to control it.
The strategy for combatting aggressive plants in the garden is different for each species. Garlic mustard is a biennial, meaning it gathers energy the first year, then blooms and dies the second year. If you leave it while it's flowering, chances are you'll forget to pull it later, after it has blended back into the green of the garden. By the time the plant dies and turns brown later in the summer, marring your garden with its skeletal remains, the seeds will have matured and dispersed, creating an even bigger problem next year.
But foil its attempt to make and spread new seed, and the soil will eventually run out of seed to make new plants. Best to pull now, while in bloom, though it can be pulled any time before the seeds mature. "Grab low and pull slow" is a good motto for getting as much of the root as possible. Don't put the pulled plants in your compost pile. Even when pulled while young, there's still a chance that the flowers will mature into viable seed.
To avoid having to stuff the pulled plants in trash bags to send to the landfill, what we've done at Herrontown Woods is pull every last one we can find, then pile them in an out of the way spot, so that any seeds that mature on the pulled plants and sprout the next year will be easy to find and pull. Pulling gets easier each year, until what once took hours now takes but a few minutes.All problems should yield so nicely to persistence.
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In what way does it alter soil chemistry?
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