Tips to Slow Common pokeweed

Wear gloves since it contains toxins that can irritate the skin of the allergic. Its mature taproots develop strong resistant systems, so pull it out when it’s young. It won’t survive repeated cultivation, so keep at it. Remove it from pastures and barnyards to avoid harming potential grazers. Scientists continue to study one common leaf spot fungus, Phoma sorghina as a potential bio-control.

So whether native or non-native, the plants you notice that grow both in your yard and in tough, disturbed, abandoned sites where little else does, can tip you off to a potential weed suspect.

EXCEPT

I use Sedum in tough sites where little else grows. Here I planted a Sedum, Autumn joy hybrid in a droughty new bed at the edge of the woods. It receives hot sun most of the day, no irrigation other than native rainfall, and substantial competition from native tree roots. I put down only 4” inches of good compost on top of the hardpan dry clay that previously existed, just to counteract the thirst of the nearby trees in the forest and planted the Sedum shallowly in the better soil. In less than a season the Sedum took off, flowered prodigiously and spread even into the hardpan below.

Above: Specimen sedum in tough spot

Sedum tolerate dry, airless, droughty soils, wet soils, sunny, hot spots, and even shade. In new or very shallow beds that top tough soil conditions, spots where weeds tend to make themselves right at home, I use Sedum. Over time Sedum spreads with little fuss and helps take the places the weeds would otherwise occupy in new beds.

I discovered Mossy stonecrop, Sedum acre, a yellow flowering low- growing Sedum as it grew wild and weedy in a deserted bus stop. Yes, it is weedy. But I’ve found that when it grows out of bounds, its shallow roots make it easy to remove. Since Sedum tolerates rocky soil and grows well in rock gardens, I have even planted this wild weedy Sedum in areas covered with “57” stone gravel, those sunny areas where irrigation run-off encourages weeds to sprout. It happily spreads and continues to diminish the territory available for weedy volunteers.

In the photos below, not only does the yellow flowered low growing Mossy stonecrop work hard in a new partly shady, moist, wild woodland’s edge that I just started to cultivate, but it even co-operates at the edges of my flower beds.

Left: Mossy stonecrop colonizes a new woodland bed… Right: and co-exists as it grows at the feet of cultivars