Company named after weeds: Cirsium Garden Design, UK

Cirsium is the name of a garden design company in Hook, Hampshire (UK), and also the Latin genus name for one of the thistle genera. I love their logo - go to their website to see a larger version.

Genus: thistles, Cirsium, Asteraceae

Drought-tolerant gardening in Austin, TX

Instead of pouring rare water over lawns of grasses not adapted to heat and drought, plant a prairie of native plants that you let go brown in the summer drought. A great article on projects like this in Austin, TX was recently published in The New York Times.  A short excerpt, showing how perception is strongly linked to knowledge (or lack thereof) for many people:

“People were asking: ‘What are all these weeds? Why aren’t we mowing?’ ” Mr. Simmons said. So he started giving talks to the community, and his team gave tours and handed out educational material.
“Six months later, when we decided to mow, to make the wildflowers show up better in the spring, we got all these calls saying, ‘Why are you mowing down our prairie?’ ” he said.

Product: Weed trimmer toy

The toy that creates people with OCD gardening syndrome - a Home Depot toy weed trimmer.  It is only $9.98, and a great buy of plastic made in China, I bet.  Give the kid a real metal shovel instead to dig up some thistle roots. Let kids do real things, and learn about the real outdoors.  But maybe that is too much to hope for, when there are so many gadget-happy parents in the US.

Weed Quote: Thomas Fuller, 1732

A good garden may have some weeds.  

~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Vinegar and hot water

Two really good ways to kill any plant, weed or not, is to either pour boiling water over it or spray it with vinegar.  It works.  Here is a link to a vinegar killing evaluation, and the boiling water I have used myself.  Just boil some water in a tea kettle and then pour it over the weeds in the driveway.  Much better than store-bought chemicals.

Squeezed barnyardgrass

weed in tight place, a photo by Vilseskogen on Flickr.

This annual grass plant (barnyardgrass, Echinochloa crus-galli) is really in a tight spot, on the wall of a raised bed.  But it is doing great, after managing to sink at least some of its roots into the soil on the other side of the boards through the tiny crack.

Species:  barnyardgrass, Echinochloa crus-galli, Poaceae