Growing Like Weeds

"One of my favorite and most optimistic gardening strategies consists of allowing strange plants to grow to maturity in the hopes that they might be desirable additions to the garden, rather than—as they inevitably become—lanky invaders with miniscule, unattractive flowers and spiny foliage."
~~Garden Ranter Elizabeth Licata on today's GardenRant post about weeds.

That sounds exactly like me! Reading the post about weeds and the new book Weeds by Richard Mabey reminded me of all the times I had let something grow just to see what it would be.

Let's see... There was the time I got all excited to have a native buckwheat growing naturally in the yard. It turned out to be cudweed. Luckily it didn't spread too badly!

Then there was the burdock plant that I planted from seed. I got them as a gift because I eat weird vegetables. I planted them in the vegetable garden and nothing happened. Long after I planted them, one of the seeds sprouted. The plant has really big leaves. I am a sucker for really big leaves! So I let it grow and never harvested the burdock root. Eventually it was about 5' x 5' and looking very cool! Then it got flowers, wow! Then the flowers made giant cockleburrs. Yikes! Get that thing out of here! It is now gone, but burdock leaves still come up from the roots periodically so it is still alive down there...

One time at the other house I planted a really cool plant that I got from Dad. He had them growing all over his yard (should have been my first clue!). It was really pretty with reddish stems and nice big leaves. It grew even bigger leaves in my yard than in his much hotter one. Eventually the plant was about 9' tall. I loved it! I found out it was Pokeweed! When we moved I had to take it out. The realtor thought it looked weedy (she was wrong about that!). When I took it out and pulled the root up I followed it about 10 feet through the lawn before it broke off!!!!!!!

Ok. So I guess I kind of understand why El Esposo is not excited when I have a volunteer that I let grow "for awhile...just to see what it is."

:-)

Be like a weed and THRIVE wherever you find yourself today!