Xref: 127.0.0.1 uk.rec.gardening:161659

Help please, I have been clearing out a weed strewn and neglected garden of
it's many uninvited vistors and I am meeting with reasonable success. but.
for one type of unmentionable. I have tried every thing that I can think of
but to no avail. it is of this description: A marble to small chesnut sized
bulb that tends
to grow in clusters that produces a long/tall thin green spear.
It has taken over the garden and will not die under any circumstances.
So someone please step forward and give me your advice.

Regards, Terry.

In article , Terry
Lynton writes
Help please, I have been clearing out a weed strewn and neglected garden of
it's many uninvited vistors and I am meeting with reasonable success. but.
for one type of unmentionable. I have tried every thing that I can think of
but to no avail. it is of this description: A marble to small chesnut sized
bulb that tends
to grow in clusters that produces a long/tall thin green spear.
It has taken over the garden and will not die under any circumstances.
So someone please step forward and give me your advice.

One of the things it could be is Wild Garlic alias Ramsoms - Allium
ursinum. The leaves and bulbs carry a garlic smell and they can be used
much like chives. The plants favours damp conditions to grow in, though
it will appear in drier gardens too. It is to some extent a weed of
neglect, so if you carry out your cultivation and growing programme, you
will find that it gives way to the competition. For quicker results,
pick all the bulbs out of any area you particularly want cleared.
--
Alan & Joan Gould, North Lincs.

Xref: 127.0.0.1 uk.rec.gardening:161669

Could it be crocosmia? I think they can spread like crazy from seeds.

Or perhaps wild lily? My sister has found it impossible to rid her garden of these.

In either case, I'd get out the heavy-duty kills-whatever-it-touches Roundup and paint the
leaves with it.

Regards,
Melanie



"Terry Lynton" wrote in message
...
Help please, I have been clearing out a weed strewn and neglected garden of
it's many uninvited vistors and I am meeting with reasonable success. but.
for one type of unmentionable. I have tried every thing that I can think of
but to no avail. it is of this description: A marble to small chesnut sized
bulb that tends
to grow in clusters that produces a long/tall thin green spear.
It has taken over the garden and will not die under any circumstances.
So someone please step forward and give me your advice.

Regards, Terry.

"Terry Lynton" wrote in message
...
A marble to small chesnut sized
bulb that tends
to grow in clusters that produces a long/tall thin green spear.
It has taken over the garden and will not die under any circumstances.

Yes I have been delivered I think the same weed in some 'topsoil' from a
friendly local farmer (the soil is good once all the weeds are riddled out).
Having looked at the pile from whence it came, I can see only couch grass,
thistles and rape. Through a process of elimination I'm tending to think
that it's the last but could stand corrected - I'm pretty sure that I know
what the roots of couch and thistles look like.

I guess I'm 'lucky' as the pile is delivered onto the drive so we have the
chance to put it through a casting sieve but in situ I would tend to agree
with the glyphosate idea. If you've got good plants mixed up with it then
you can mix the glyphosate with wallpaper paste for ease of painting but
wait til spring when they really start taking off again. If you *do* decide
to continue with a hand weeding option, one good thing about doing that now
is that somehow the roots seem to cling less tenaciously to the soil :-)

Good luck

--A

The message
from "Tony" contains these words:

Could it be crocosmia?

Sounds very like it, and they can make a very dense mat.

I'd get out the heavy-duty kills-whatever-it-touches Roundup and paint the
leaves with it.

Completely wrong time of year for using contact weedkillers, and even
if it was the right time, they may not reach small underground leafless
daughter-bulbs forming a new corm with its own roots, alongside the
parent one with leaves. It's a job for patient digging and lifting; but
all the UK-naturalising bulbs I can think of which still have leaves
showing at this time of year, will eventually succumb to this. Any bulb
will also eventually shrink and die, if all its top growth is cut off
frequently at ground level during the growing season.

Clearing every tiny loosened bulb visible on dug ground is the kind of
simple job that a child, teenager or student might do for financial
gain...preferably by volume of results.

Janet.

Your description of the weed sounds like chive. I had them poping up all
over the yard and one day I just gave up pulling them and started
chopping them up and putting them on my baked potato, hey if you cant
beat them enjoy them. Ed