No gardener likes weeds. On the grand scheme of the weed scale, some are easy to pull out, some are relatively harmless and some will quickly take over your garden. The most persistent and irritating weed in my garden these days is what is commonly known as ground elder.
Botanically speaking, this terrible invasive weed is a form of Aegopodium podagraria L. and if you leave it alone, it will choke out other plants and take over the world.
If you have never seen ground elder, you can count yourself lucky. Unfortunately the more Squamish gardens I work in, the more I see it.
You can identify it by its apple-green, lobed leaves and flat heads of cream-coloured flowers which appear in summer. It can creep between cultivated plants and create large clumps of foliage which eventually smother smaller plants. I have never seen a weed develop and spread as rapidly as ground elder.
Ground elder is a perennial weed with rhizomes, but it dies down below the ground during the winter. This makes it incredibly difficult to find and remove if you work on your beds late in the season.
There is an ornamental variegated form of aegopodium (available at several locations in Squamish) which is touted as being less invasive, but if you chose to use this form, make sure it is well contained and will not expand out of its borders and containers. Truthfully, I would suggest giving this plant a pass.
It is able to grow and thrive from only a small piece of root, so if you are not able to get rid of every tiny bit, it will keep on regenerating.
Ground elder flowers from May to July and if you do not get around to digging out this terrible weed, at least cut off the flowering tops before they go to seed and create hundreds of new plants. The vegetative spread is just as important as cutting off the flower tops to reduce seeds. You really need to dig this stuff out, and probably more than once.
I often find myself digging out the entire clump of a plant that the weed surrounds, hosing off its roots, and then meticulously pulling all the white roots of the ground elder out of the established plants root ball.
Staying on top of the weeding really helps. Regular cutting down of the foliage ( just below the ground level ) with a hoe can eventually weaken the plant. You need to do this about every seven to 10 days to see results.
Another organic measure is eating the leaves in your salads. I've heard it is a cross between spinach and dandelion greens. If you decide not to eat it for dinner, any piece of the plant or rhizome needs to be thrown in the garbage. Do not compost this plant or put it back into the soil in any form.
