It’s weed season! Are you already exhausted just thinking about tackling your weeds? We can’t make them go away – – not instantly – – but we can’t give you tips to help reduce your weeds year over year, and eventually minimize their return to nearly gone, or at least easily manageable.
There are a number of ways to deal with weeds… Some more effective and safe than others. I have made a summary of my assessment of each method later in this article. But first, some ground rules for tackling weeds:
Rule #1 – Get to your weeds before they go to seed
Do not wait to remove weeds until they become dry and tan. By then, they have all “gone to seed” and no matter how you remove them, in the process they will drop seeds for next year’s weed crop. Make sure you deal with them while they are still green. You will also be more likely to get all their roots when they are still green.
Tackle this Foxtail Brome now…while it is still green. Its flowers have not made ripe seeds.
Oops…waited too long. This Arabian Grass has already gone to seed, and will drop its tan seeds when disturbed.
This Arabian Grass has already dropped all its seeds. Hoeing now will sow its dropped seeds deeper into the tilled soil for next season’s crop.
Rule #2 – Try not to disturb your soil
Weed seeds thrive in disturbed soil. The more you hoe, the more you disturb the soil. This effectively tills the soil to sow next year seeds into the cozy new soil openings you have created. Hoeing, which is essentially “light tillage,” destroys microbial systems and soil structure, reduces organic matter, and leads to low nutrient levels and low soil moisture. It also exposes more weed seeds that were formally dormant – – but when they are exposed to fresh air, sunshine, and moisture, they germinate. By leaving your soil alone, you can avoid exposing millions of dormant weed seeds to sprout into life.
Rule #3 – Learn to identify your weeds.
Some weeds are more invasive than others, while some are actually beneficial, and some are even edible! The invasive weeds in our area that we should concentrate on removing include Sahara mustard, goat head, Arabian grass, annual burweed (ragweed), and Russian thistle (tumbleweed).
Some weeds however are edible, and can be used for a salad, a pizza topping, or sautéed as a pot herb. These include Lambs quarters or goosefoot, purslane, dandelion, pigweed (Amaranthus), chick weed, most wild mustards, and Russian thistle (tumbleweed) when it is very small and soft.
Some weeds fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and deliver it to the soil in their root zone after they die, adding natural fertilizer for your other plants. These include plants in the pea family like clovers and all legumes. If these aren’t overtaking your other plants, you might want to leave them.
After you have determined what weeds to remove, you need to decide how to remove them. Here is a summary of the most widely used methods, and my personal rating of their effectiveness and safety:
Weed-busting Methods
Robin’s Top Weed-busting Picks
Organic mulch – One of my top choices for effective weed prevention is organic mulches, especially wood chips. A thick layer of organic matter (anything that was previously alive, like leaves, stems, or flowers) is beneficial to your soil in many ways. It provides a thick layer of insulation which, over time, is broken down by soil microbes and worms into rich soil. A layer of mulch also:
- Keeps soil temperatures lower in summer
- Holds moisture and prevents soil moisture from evaporating
- Blocks light and prevents weed seeds from germinating
- Kills weed seeds by overheating them during decomposition of mulch
- Protects soil microbes from harsh climatic conditions
Use wood chips liberally around perennial plants, but avoid using where you want to plant annuals. Woodchips tie up nitrogen, which most annual plants need in abundance. Avoid dyed mulch and hay or straw bales with visible seed heads. Call or flag down an arborist in your neighborhood and have them drop off fresh wood chips to spread over your yard or pathways.
String Trimmers – I am also a fan of string trimmers, or “weed whackers” because they don’t disturb the soil. It is much faster to “whack” weeds than to hand pull, and it is especially effective when the weeds are still green. For the biggest bang for your time, you may need to repeat the process several times in a season when you first start to tackle your weeds this way. If you watch the weeds and trim as soon as you see flowers, you will eliminate seed production. After just a few years, you will reduce weed seeds so dramatically without disturbing the soil, you will mostly eliminate future weeds.
Stand-up or “Step-and-Twist” Weeders
Hand pulling weeds, especially when the soil is moist or the weeds are still green, is another effective way to reduce weeds. However, we all know how back-breaking that can be. Enter the stand-up method: a stand-up or step-and-twist weeder pulls weeds and their roots while you are standing. Fiskars makes a 4-Claw Stand-up Garden Weeder that pulls weeds out from an upright position. You push the tool into the ground with your foot, then pull to grab the weed and its roots from the ground. I haven’t used one myself, but I would like to test one (we don’t have enough weeds to justify the purchase, but I’m intrigued). While I have seen them work wonders in lawns, I’m not sure how well they work in our dry, compacted desert soils. These weeders may need moist soil to work effectively. I’ll be doing more research on them.
One brand of stand-up weeder. There are other brands that each work a little differently.
Hopefully you will find one of these methods right for your yard. If you are still overwhelmed, just take one small area at a time, weed that one area, and stand back and admire your progress. Don’t try to take on your whole yard at once. Just make your goal to finish the job before the weeds turn dry and tan. If you can achieve that goal, it will reduce your future weeding each year!
Watching autumn leaves turn color and then fall to the ground may seem like a dying process, but it is very much a vital, living process. In fact, leaf drop is only possible if the leaves are attached to a plant or branch that is alive.
Have you ever seen a tree with a section of dead leaves clinging to one of the branches, or observed an entire tree full of dead leaves holding tight to the branches, never to fall? That branch or whole tree is surely dead itself if it holds persistently onto its dead leaves after they die. Eventually, wind, rain and storms will batter the dead leaves until they are ripped off the branches by weather and time, but they will never slip elegantly off the branches of a dead tree or plant like they do from living plants and trees each fall.
Plants that shed their foliage at the end of the growing season are termed deciduous, and people travel every year to watch the parade of leaf colors as groves of deciduous trees prepare for their autumn leaf drop and winter sleep.
The intricate mechanism that powers this annual shedding of leaves from deciduous trees and plants is ingenious. And the chemical gears that snip leaves off their stems can only continue to turn when powered by a live plant.
The first trigger that starts leaves in preparing for their skydive to earth is when the day length begins to shorten as winter approaches. During the growing season, the light-capturing marvel called chlorophyll (which makes leaves look green) is continually being manufactured and broken down during the longer summer days. As autumn approaches and night length increases, chlorophyll production slows down to a standstill until eventually all the chlorophyll disappears. Other pigments that are normally masked by the abundance of chlorophylls begin to show through, and we see a magnificent palette of yellows, oranges, and reds.
At the same time as this color transformation, each leaf is busy sending its accumulated stores of essential minerals, sugars, and other hard-won products out of the leaf, down the branches, and into the roots for safe storage underground all winter. As minerals like iron, phosphorus, and other valuable nutrients are transported off-leaf, other color changes are occurring, a visible testament to the chemical lab work being accomplished by each leaf before it falls.
In preparation for the u
ndocking of leaf from stem, a layer of cork-like material has been forming to reduce and finally cut off the flow between leaf and stem. Any sugars, secondary pigments, or waste products still trapped in the leaves reveal themselves as the various autumn colors we wait for each year, now that the green chlorophyll is no longer king. When the leaf has surrendered all the nutrients it can transport, a magical thing happens: a chemical is sent to the very “seam”, or separation layer, where the leaf is attached to its stem. This veritable scalpel, a chemical called abscissic acid, snips the cell walls that attach leaf to stem, and breaks the bond holding each leaf to its living stem. A seal has already formed at the tear-line, so the branch is protected from fluid loss and bacterial entry. The leaf is released from its stem to perform its next chapter of life under its parent plant: as a cover to insulate the roots from frost, and as a time-release fertilizer for the roots as the leaves gradually break down into the soil.
The following spring, as the sap begins to flow, the roots pump back upward all the stored nutrients into the waiting buds of the branches, and new leaves emerge fed with resources recycled from their predecessors that are now serving a second “life” on the soil below.
The entire process of leaf drop is a response to chilling winter temperatures that would otherwise freeze the water inside each cell of a deciduous plant’s thin leaves, burst the cells, and damage the leaves beyond function, ending up with the complete loss of each leaf’s accumulated storehouse of nutrients, minerals, and sugars. Evergreen plants (think pines, cedars, etc.) have leaves that contain a functional “anti-freeze” to prevent them from freezing. In contrast, the strategy of deciduous plants is to avoid the whole threat of frozen leaves altogether by snipping off each leaf after its valuables are sent off to the roots, accumulating the fallen leaves over the plant’s roots like a warm blanket during their winter sleep, and reabsorbing the disassembled leaf nutrients each year as the blanket of leaves decomposes.
The role that fallen leaves contribute to the health of our trees, shrubs, and landscapes, and whole ecosystems, for that matter, should make us think twice before we rake up and haul away fallen leaves on our own property. Not only do last season’s leaves fertilize next season’s growth, the mulch they create helps to hold in precious soil moisture over drier seasons, and helps to deter weed growth. If we remove leaf “litter”, we are short-circuiting the naturally self-sustaining sequence of nutrient recycling, and nature’s carefully balanced systems.
What we witness as autumn leaves falling may look like a dying process, but it is very much a living cycle of perfectly orchestrated phases of growth, storage, and slumber.
What an ingenious cycle.
Find the potential of your yard and property!
Robin will help you plan YOUR yard — including identifying
your plants…both native and exotic,
and recommending new problem-solving plants and ideas,
from pathways to yard design!
Do you long to know more about your own yard and property? Would you like to walk through your yard/property alongside a plant expert to identify any plants you don’t know, both native and non-native, and get ideas for other plants that would thrive in your yard? Would you like to get suggestions about planting hardy, drought-tolerant, attractive, desert-friendly plants, including trees, shrubs, and perennials that can help you reach your highest dreams for your property?
Landscape planning with views in mind
If you want to achieve your goals for enjoying your yard to its fullest potential without having to contract an expensive landscape architect, consider inviting botanist and designer Robin Kobaly into your yard for a personal consultation. Robin will help you appreciate and identify what you already have, and suggest what plants, pathways, or other strategies or structures you could incorporate into your landscape to solve issues you may have with landscaping, views, privacy, wind, hot walls, soil challenges, or problem spots. Robin will share easy, concrete steps to help you successfully plan out a functional, sustainable, low-maintenance, attractive landscape plan to empower you in creating your own dream yard – yourself!
Robin identifies yard plants, and shares traditional and modern uses of native plants.
Robin will bring plenty of supporting materials to help you envision your yard’s potential, and supply photos of suggested plants to fit your yard’s needs. She will suggest a variety of methods that are easy but effective in achieving a landscape plan that suits your individual desires, personality, passions, moods, entertainment essentials, as well as considerations if you have children or pets, while providing suggestions to help you solve persistent problems on your property. Robin also can share homemade remedies that you can easily make yourself to solve common garden problems such as powdery mildew, insect attacks, rabbit munching, etc.
Imagining a new backyard plan
Your yard consultation will normally last about 3 hours, during which Robin will answer your questions, offer ideas about how to plan your yard to achieve your dreams and desires, present ideas about what plants would do well on your property to achieve those goals (and where you can buy those plants), and give you valuable tips on irrigation for success. She will share secrets about how you can discover your best approach for getting the most enjoyment from your yard by knowing what to focus on to achieve great results. Robin will also identify all the native plants you may have on your property, and introduce you to some of your native plants’ special qualities and uses that you can incorporate into your own life.
Robin takes notes and makes yard sketches throughout your session, and gives you the notes and sketches at the end of the session. You will be able to work from the design sketch that you and Robin create together, with a list of plants, hardscape options, and other landscape ideas to help you implement those proposals. Robin will also give you a permanent discount card for 10% off any plants or garden supplies you purchase at Cactus Mart in Morongo Valley, which carries many native and drought-tolerant plants besides cactus. You will be given a number of complementary handouts that Robin has produced that are helpful for your yard landscaping.
Creating yard plans with Robin
The fee for this personal yard consultation is based on yard acreage and distance for travel. Please email or call for a quote for this service on your yard or property. We are excited to meet you and your yard, and to discuss and brainstorm your dreams and goals for your yard. We love helping people get excited about reaching the potential of their yard. This is a very fun experience for both of us!
To discuss your personal yard consultation, call (760) 363-1166 or email robin@powerofplants.com for a quote and to schedule a fun journey into your own yard through the eyes and experience of a seasoned botanist, Robin Kobaly.
Planting in fall or early spring is always your best bet…but what if you get a potted plant in summer? Should you wait until fall to plant it?
We are told repeatedly to plant either in the fall or early spring in desert areas (I myself encourage this in my classes and lectures). Summer planting is to be avoided like the plague. But what do we do if we end up getting a plant just before summer, or worse yet, in the middle of summer? Should we plant that potted specimen during a heat wave, or keep it in its pot until fall when the air is cooler, the soil is cooler, and the sun is less intense? This can be a gut-wrenching decision for gardeners who want to do the right thing, but worry about subjecting their new plant to either the ravages of the extreme heat and intense sun if planted in the ground in summer, or to the poor prospects of a plant surviving a desert summer in a black pot with hot roots and wet soil. Hmmm…which is harder on a young plant: hot soil in the ground or hot soil in a pot?
Black pots heat up fast in the sun, and hot roots are never happy roots. Even worse for our southwest native plants are excessively hot, wet roots–often resulting in root rot and death.
I have had this discussion with many of my gardening friends who are experts…those who are professional nursery growers themselves. They all wince when they think about planting in summer in the desert, but they tend to agree that of the two bad choices, the best option is to go ahead and put the plant into the ground, installing a special protective shield for the plant during summer plantings.
We are advised to not plant in hot summer months for many reasons: plants require more water in their first and subsequent years when planted in summer instead of fall or spring, they may succumb to root rot if the soil is kept moist when the soil is very hot, and plants may grow slower than if they had been planted in fall or spring. However, there is a real danger of the plant not surviving the summer at all in a pot. All plants, but especially southwest native plants, hate for their roots to be hot if the soil is wet. Our native southwest plants are adapted to go dormant in summer when soils are dry, so their roots are used to being dry when it is hot. In a pot however, especially a black pot, the soil and roots heat up even more than if the plant were in the ground, and to compensate, we may have to water the plant almost daily to keep the roots from overheating and drying out beyond their tolerance. However, extremely hot, wet soils are a breeding ground for fungus and bacteria, which can proliferate in these conditions and overwhelm the roots to the point of root rot and sudden death.
Plant roots that are buried in the ground, even when exposed to the same air temperature as a potted plant nearby, are living in a soil environment that is not nearly as hot as the plant sitting next to it, but above-ground, in a pot. One way to lessen the impacts of this “black pot syndrome” is to put the black-potted plant into a bigger ceramic or non-black pot to shield the roots from the heat of the direct sun. This definitely helps, but I have still had some potted plants succumb to summer heat as I waited until fall to plant them. Our fall planting window in southern California usually this doesn’t arrive until the first of November–which is a long wait if you acquired a plant in summer.
If you plant in summer in the desert, install a shade screen on the sunny (south) side of your plant to provide day-long shade all summer.
If you have a potted plant you have adopted just as summer sets in, here is a suggestion for planting during the heat to give it the best chance of success: immediately after planting, install a shade barrier on the south (sunny) side of the plant using three stakes in a “V” shape, either made of wood, metal, or PVC pipe sections. Use stakes tall enough to cast a shade onto the entire plant. Onto these three stakes, attach shade cloth with either twist ties or a stapler, so the plant receives shade most of the day as the sun moves across it. Install the “V” middle-point as close as possible to the plant to give it as much shade as possible. Check your shade screen throughout the day to check its positioning, and pull the sides in closer if needed to cast shade onto your new planting. Do not put shade cloth over the plant, as the cloth will trap heat under it and heat up the plant even more. A large rock placed on the sunny (south) side of the plant also helps your plant to stay happier. The rock will shade the ground next to the roots, and retain moisture longer under it. The companion rock also helps to shade the plant, and can even encourage some dew to form and drip off the rock as cool night air condenses on the rock still warm from the day’s sun.
Figuring out how often to water a newly installed plant during summer is a delicate situation as well–too wet, and it rots; too dry, and it suffers. The root ball needs to be kept moist, but wet soil at the surface where soils are very hot can cause excessive growth of bacteria and harmful fungi, resulting in root rot and killing your plant. The soil needs to be kept moist about 3 inches below the surface, but keeping the soil continuously wet at the surface can be detrimental. Checking soil moisture is helpful here: either use an inexpensive moisture meter (less that $9 at gardening stores), or you can use an old screwdriver to dig a small hole to a depth of about 2-3”. Check for moisture at the bottom of the hole. After watering, if no moisture has reached the bottom of your test hole, keep watering. Use a new hole to recheck moisture with your meter or hole after watering again. Allow the soil in the top 2-3 inches to dry out between watering the newly installed plant.
Moisture meters are a great tool in helping you check soil moisture to determine when and how long to irrigate your plants. They are inexpensive and easy to use (and fun to use all around your yard to check soil moisture after you water).
I’m writing this article now because several months ago I decided to wait until fall to plant a very special native plant I have wanted for years–Yerba Santa, which a fellow botanist had gifted to me. It has been thriving for three months in the pot…that is until we had a 118 degree day in the midst of weeks of over 100 degree weather with extreme humidity. The Yerba Santa has taken a nose dive, even though I have had the pot itself shaded. I lament now not planting it even though summer was setting in when I received it, since I fear I have now lost the treasured plant. As a rule of thumb, plants that cannot tolerate wet soil during summer (which include some of our southwest native plants), should not be planted in summer even if the above measures are followed. Examples of these plants that hate summer water and need dry soils during summer include Ceanothus (California Lilac), Fremontodendron (Flannelbush), Arctostaphylos (Manzanita), and Trichostema (Wooly Blue Curls). For this reason, the easiest plants to get established in the summer are those that can tolerate year-round moisture.
I’ll never know for certain if my Yerba Santa would have survived the heat in the ground during this excessive heat wave, but I know for sure it hated being in the pot as summer put its burning fangs around my tender plant. Hopefully these tips can help you can avoid this sad experience.
Check out more “Notes from Songbird Cottage”
You will love searching here for the best plants to satisfy your landscape needs for your Southwest yard! Click on the image below to search all categories. Our Water-Wise Plant Data Base includes hundreds of plants, both native and non-native, that are water-wise, drought-tolerant, available at Southern California nurseries, and that are cold-hardy in our cool desert winters but still stand up to our extreme summer heat. We have included a special category of “California Native Plants”, so gardeners who want to grow plants native to our area can find them all in one location in our database. See below for a discussion of USDA Hardiness Zones, Sunset Climate Zones, and cold hardiness, and how they each relate to our region.
Start your plant search here:
~ USDA Hardiness Zones are based on the average annual minimum winter temperature. This system divides North America into 11 separate zones. Each zone is 10°F warmer, or colder, in an average winter than the adjacent zone. Zone 1 is the coldest; zone 11 is the warmest. In the Mojave Desert, we are predominately within USDA Zone 8, based on our winter low temperatures that indicate where a plant may survive the winter. Our lower, Colorado Desert is predominately within USDA Zones 9 and 10.
~ Sunset Climate Zones are based on the combination of climatic factors that affect a plant’s total performance, including length of growing season, timing and amount of rainfall, winter lows, summer highs, wind, and humidity. Sunset climate zones indicate where a plant will thrive year-round. Sunset magazine classifies 33 western zones, numbered from harshest (Zone 1) to mildest (Zone 33), and organized by region from north to south. The boundaries of each of these unique zones are a function of six geographic and climactic factors: latitude, elevation, ocean influence, continental air influence, mountains and hills, and local terrain. Taken together, these factors determine what will grow well in your garden and what won’t. In the Mojave Desert, we are predominately within Sunset Zone 11 (“Medium to High Deserts of California”), based on many climatic and geographic factors that influence where a plant may perform the best year-round. Our lower, Colorado Desert is predominantly within Sunset Zone 13 (“Low or Subtropical Desert Areas”).
~ Cold Hardiness is shown in degrees Fahrenheit. This is the minimum temperature the plant can tolerate without suffering lasting damage.
January Garden Tasks
Frost is likely on dry, windless, clear nights this month
Apply mulch around plants and under drain spouts to retain water, prevent soil erosion, and feed nutrients into soil with each rain.
~ Keep plants watered to prevent frost damage
~ Wrap irrigation valves and pipes to protect from freezing
~ Turn off irrigation timers if it rains
~ Apply mulch around plants to retain water and soil, and to feed nutrients into soil with each rain
~ Prune roses and summer-blooming deciduous fruit trees
~ Don’t prune frost-damaged plants until spring growth
~ Plant bare-root trees and shrubs now through early March
~ Mulch under downspouts with bark, compost, or gravel to help rain soak into soil instead of running off
~ Check tree stakes & ties for support against strong winds
