It’s winter time on the Gold Coast, and most plants have slowed down their growth to give you a reprieve from the fast summer growth spurts. This is a good time to try and get some of your most persistent garden weeds under control.
Are you having persistent problems with “onion weed“, nut grass and purple oxalis? God knows how they got their in the first place. Spraying them with herbicide just won’t kill them and you can kill your precious ornamental plants by trying to do so. All 3 of these pesky weeds have underground storage bulbs, which need to be pulled out to even get a chance to keeping them under control. Then with oxalis and onion weed, they produce so many little bulblets, that you need to sieve the soil to spot any remaining small ones.
One thing to your advantage is that they have stopped producing seeds for the time being.
The only solution is to pick up your garden fork and get into your garden and do the hard work while it is still easy.
With oxalis and onion weed, lift them lightly and when you are close to the bulb, separate it carefully from the soil and pick out all the surrounding tiny bulbs.
Nut grass is a bit different. Each runner leads to a bulb. Get underneath the green shoot with your fork and lift it upwards. Do not pull it up strongly or in one fail swoop. Pull at it, and if it won’t come out, get the fork under the last strand of runner you can see, lift it and pull at the newly loosened runner. If you get 3 bulbs each time, this means you’ve had a good attempt. Chances are you have pulled up bulbs that didn’t even have a green shoot yet.
Once you’re satisfied with your work for that day, go back the following week and gently pull up any new shoots that have popped up.
Keep doing this until you have now more of these weeds in the winter, and hopefully you have gained back control of your most unruly weeds in your garden.
This garden in front has a persistent nut grass problem
