To Defeat Weeds, Show No Mercy

As the seasons unfold, weeds come in waves, just as roses follow tulips. Chickweed, comfortable in winter, is soon joined by soft carpets of lamb's-quarters. Dandelions spangle the world with happy yellow dots as their satanic roots drill between paving stones on the terrace. When the weather warms, purslane prowls the soil in mats and ragweed raises towers.

Most weeds are easy to defeat if you learn their ways. Here's Gertrude Jekyll's advice from "Wood and Garden," published in 1899: "I learnt from an old farmer a good way of getting rid of a bed of nettles -- to thrash them down with a stick every time they grow up. If this is done about three times during the year, the root becomes so much weakened that it is easily forked out, or if the treatment is gone on with, the second year the nettles die."

You need to be more relentless than your weeds. Even dandelions lodged in cracks will succumb if you pour vinegar on them. It is also wise to behead them before they can set seed.

Admittedly, a few weeds require you to duck into a phone booth and don a cape. Jekyll cites Japanese knotweed, still among the worst, along with star-of-Bethlehem, a dainty spring bulb that she failed to eradicate. But any plant will eventually die if you prevent it from photosynthesizing. Whenever it shows green, you must smite it. This may take your entire life, that's all.

For routine annual summer weeds, the news is good. Catch them early and often by cultivating the soil lightly with a hoe. Not a chopping hoe (that's for later, after you've ignored this advice) but a draw hoe, such as a scuffle hoe or collinear hoe, which skims beneath the soil surface, sparing your crops' roots. Doing this every day, like shaving, is a lot less work than all that hacking and pulling when they are mature. Hoe your weeds on a dry, sunny day, so that any left lying in the paths or beds will wilt quickly, not reroot from a prone position. Lawn weeds can be dealt with by maintaining a healthy stand of grass that will compete with broad-leaved weeds. High mowing (about three inches) will favor the grass, as will a yearly sprinkling of sifted compost in fall.

As for those nettles, it isn't the bed of them that is nettlesome but the odd one you grasp barehanded in careless haste. The sting is brief but cruel. A nettle bed might even be considered an asset if you find the plant a delicacy in early spring. It can be cooked any way you'd cook spinach or made into an iron- and vitamin-rich tea, a spring tonic to arm you against more formidable foes.