Why some of the weeds are staying

If you went to visit one of my new projects this summer, you might have trouble telling the plants from the “weeds”.

A shaded septic bed that was once lawn is now sedges, wood sorrel and plantains. It’s a flat swath of green but of these, only the sedges were intentional.

The question becomes: is this a problem?

What we call “grass” here

The Highlands lawn is a sorry thing. Up here, with our shade and our soil, we don’t grow great lawns. We grow green stuff, but it isn’t often grass.

I’m stewarding a large lawn conversion project I installed in the spring. I removed about 2,500 sq ft of “lawn” and planted it with a matrix of four types of sedges, then shade-tolerating perennials and shrubs.

When you remove a lawn, things will grow back. Not so much grass, but plantains, large-leaf asters and all sorts of plants that were happily living in your yard and made it look like you had a lawn…of sorts.

I mulched about half of this project to help stop weeds growing. There are a few weeds there, but not many. I am removing most of the weeds from this part of the project because it’s closer to the cottage and I want it to look nice.

The revenge of the plantains

I didn’t mulch the other half because it’s on top of a septic bed – I didn’t want to harm the functioning of the bed by smothering it and cutting off the air the bed needs. So that’s the half that has weeds growing on it, among the Pennsylvania sedge, early meadow rue, wild columbine and Canada violets that I actually planted.

Most of what is growing back are plantains. They’re the non-native type, but they’ve been in Canada so long – it’s said they were one of the earliest plants to arrive in North America – that they are well and truly naturalized here.

Plantain seeds survive for decades in the soil. So when I disturbed the ground to create a nice clean slate for my planting, I gave the seeds a chance to germinate. And they did! With less competition from grass and moss, they went to the races.

The downside of weeding

So I was left with a question: do I weed all the weeds, just let them grow…or what?

Plantains specialize in growing on disturbed, compacted ground and they help open it up. I think they will help my sedges and other plants grow. They’re also very low growing and cover the ground, stopping other weed seeds from germinating.

But they also produce lots of seeds of their own, which will create more plants in the future.
Removing them isn’t free, however. One thing I learned from the experts is that every time you pull a weed, you create the conditions for more weeds to grow. You’re disturbing the ground again, bringing more seeds to the surface with every plantain you pull.

What I’m doing

The question remains open. Part of this is being prepared to change your mind.
I’m weeding troublesome plants with deep roots, such as dandelions that could harm the septic. And I’m only weeding some of the plantains – the big ones with weird flowers that will turn into 20,000 seeds.

And the wood sorrel on the septic bed? I’m leaving that. I didn’t plant it but it’s pretty, it’s covering the ground and it’s native to North America.

I could be wrong about all this. If you see me on 21 with a trailer full of plantains, you’ll know.