My Mini-Meadow Year 2: The Weeds Are Winning
October 17th, 2023
I planted a small meadow on a bank in my back yard for two main reasons:
George’s mini-meadow as it looked in “peak form” of July 2023.
1.) I was looking for a low-care, low-cost way to cover a tough site that’s not easy to work.
2.) I liked the idea of adding diversity to encourage pollinators and beneficial insects. That’s why I picked a seed mix of 27 mostly native species – one specially geared to thriving in the Northeast.
Two growing seasons are now in the bag from my May 2022 planting, and the result is what I was afraid would happen – the weeds are winning.
Despite my extensive effort to clear the bed of existing seeds and then cultivate new ones before seeding the meadow, my second-year mini-meadow has been about a 50-50 mix of weeds of wildflowers.
Read more on how George planted the mini-meadow
I’m dealing with some real thugs, too – mostly aggressive perennials like thistle, hawkweed, mugwort, tawny daylilies, and oxalis. These are stalwart enough to squelch most of the fledgling meadow species that came up from my seed mix.
The worst of the bunch, though, has been goutweed (Aegopodium podograria).
If you’re not familiar with this one, it’s a carrot-family spreading clumper with toothed, green leaves that form in groups of three. It typically grows about a foot tall but can reach up to three feet tall when given a few years of unchecked spread.
Goutweed (sometimes called ground elder or bishop’s weed) was one of the perennial weeds that had been growing for at least 10 years on the six-by-20-foot bank section that I’m trying to tame.
I grubbed out every piece of it that I could find with a mattock and trowel before planting… as I did with the many other villainous squatters that I inherited.
But the problem with goutweed is that, like thistle, it’s a plant that seems to retaliate with vengeance when you attack it.
Just yank off the leaves, and the super-powered roots send up multiple new shoots all along the radiating rhizomes.
If you dig and leave behind even a tiny root fragment, that fragment gets aggravated enough to prove to you what a big mistake you just made.
In other words, goutweed is extremely hard to eradicate and often spreads even more if your weed-fighting ability is lacking. It takes repeated digging and/or multiple herbicide treatments to win a goutweed battle.
Goutweed took over this whole section of the mini-meadow.
Ironically, many a goutweed outbreak comes from the unnoticed seeding of a groundcover that gardeners used to commonly plant – variegated bishop’s weed.
This nursery-sold groundcover is actually a version of the weed, specifically Aegopodium podograria ‘Variegatum.’
It became popular for its attractive white and green leaves and ability to grow in poor soil and the dry shade of mature trees.
Unfortunately, the variegated form can produce seeds that grow into the much more aggressive green-leafed monsters. Existing variegated plants also can revert back to its original green-leafed form.
I wouldn’t recommend planting any variegated bishop’s weed if you see it in a garden center or if a neighbor offers you some dug-up give-aways. And if you already have a planting of it, I’d suggest getting rid of it or at least trimming off any flowers before they mature and throw out seed.
The variegated form of bishop’s weed.
Once a green progeny of variegated goutweed gets a foothold, it’s off and running – literally. It not only could overtake beds in your yard, but its seeds can spread to create problems on other nearby properties.
I’ve been trying to dig out goutweed as I see it, but it’s only more difficult now trying to selectively dig among the wildflowers that I want to keep.
That’s also true of the other weeds that really have thrived in this second meadow year.
It’s much easier to dig, hoe, or spray a bed full of all weeds than to go after weeds surgically.
Instead of weeding this area less, I’ve been weeding it more than most other planted beds in my yard. I’m not sure I’m making much progress either. I get the feeling I’m trying to stop a runaway train with toy brakes.
Closeup of the green-leafed, weedy version of bishop’s weed (goutweed).
On the bright side, I did get some flashes of color here and there this year – although never more than about 10 or 15 percent of the planting at any one time.
Shasta daisies seem to be doing the best at reseeding in this poor-soil site. Those were the most prolific 2023 bloomers.
Cosmos, a reseeding annual, is holding its own, too, and supplied most of the bed’s interest from mid to late summer. Three shades of it have bloomed both years.
I’ve seen mostly just smatterings of the other 27 annuals and perennials in the American Meadows seed mix that I planted.
In year one, I got blooms from coreopsis, candytuft, calendula, cornflowers, nigella, cosmos, and red and orange poppies.
This year I got calendula, coreopsis, shasta daisies, cosmos, Siberian wallflower, red poppies, a few sweet williams, and a single lupine that didn’t flower. One sunflower came up but snapped off.
I also got some color from three red beebalms that I transplanted. Two hollyhocks came up from seed I added in spring, but they didn’t flower yet either.
I haven’t seen any of the other seeds in the mix, including larkspur, prairie coneflower, catchfly, rose mallow, scarlet flax, blue flax, gaillardia, baby blue eyes, and black-eyed susan.
None of the milkweed seeds I collected from an orange butterfly weed (Asclepia tuberosa) elsewhere in my yard came up either from a spring planting of them.
After clearing out some of the goutweed in June, I filled the space with annual melampodiums that I transplanted from seedlings that came up from last year’s garden around my front mailbox. Those gave some yellow color from mid-summer to frost.
I’m hoping that the combination of continued weeding of the bad guys and the bolstering of the good guys will help this garden turn the corner in 2024.
If not, I might have to enact the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule.