Did the weed in the title catch you to reading this post? Nice, then it did exactly what it should do. Because this is not a post about the weed you smoke (which Im sure you thought of at first since I am from the Netherlands), but this is a post about the weeds in the garden.
To be more specific, about the weeds that hide in the grass outside. When the lawn looks awesome and perfectly green, when you take a look closer you can see at what really lives there. And I can tell you, it is surely not grass.
You surely recognize this top one. A dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) which starts out with a nice yellow flower. Later on the flower dries in and these hairy pollens develop on the flower. When these blow in the wind (I don't know about you, but I used to blow these all the time towards everywhere in spring time) they spread throughout the area, and multiply in the next location. Invasive, because in a place where a dandelion is growing, the grass has some issues on coming back because of the wide circle of leaves from the plant itself.
Next up in the weed section in the lawn is the 'Crawling Buttercup' or the Ranunculus Repens. This starts out with just a small little leaf in the grass that looks a bit like parsley if you ask me. What it does is use tiny tentacles to spread out below the grass to nest in a new spot a couple of inches further down. Every little nest get a small root placement and that means it is settles in a lot of spots in now time.
Because of the spreaders it means that the grass does not have a chance to properly grow because the spreaders are tight and knicking off the grass from growing further up.
At a certain point they get a cute little yellow flower in there and again with the pollen from there that is how the spread out further.
The only option on gettnig rid on both of these is pulling them out of the grass manually ensuring you take all of the root with the system. And that is really meditative to do, but also a real bitch because it takes forever and it feels like tomorrow everything is back again at the same pace.
Here you can see that the crawling buttercup is just one big collection of tentacles and roots
.... I am often wondering what I am doing with all of this. Ofcourse I don't mind pulling the weeds but it also feels like it never stops. So the question in my mind rises then....Who is the one that decided that a lawn should contain only of grass? Why should grass be the main species in the lawn?
Did you ever watch the series or played the game 'The Last of Us'? When man versus cordyceps fungus aka mushrooms is the battle of the world? Man is battling the mushrooms to save the world. And the cordyceps is battle mankind to take over the world.
Who is actually the weed and who is the superior? Is it the grass? Or is it the weed?
I guess there is too much to do in the garden that the mind drifts off like this. Maybe I should just let it be and let the yellow flowers take over.
