Weeds in seed pots
Jane McGary (Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:25:28 PST)
On 11/16/2015 9:33 AM, Michael Mace wrote:
PS: The rainy season arrived here two weekends ago. For those of you
who don't live in a Mediterranean climate, this is our equivalent of
spring -- you can almost feel the land starting to wake up after the
long summer drought. Amaryllid seeds are ripening, the hills start to
turn green, and I rush through the last bits of bulb planting that I
didn't finish in the dry season. Little green sprouts are starting to
appear in many pots. Two thirds are weeds, one third are bulbs. But
which are which? When in doubt, I leave them -- but that means more
weeds later, and I'll never have the time to pull them all. So I'll
call them "indicator plants," and promise myself that next summer I'll
change out the potting mix. PPS: It turns out that putting window
screening around a raised bed doesn't keep out all weed seeds. Darn.
The nice thing about growing bulbs from seed is that most of them are
monocots, so any dicot that comes up is a weed. I leave most of those
until they make a pair of true leaves, which are easier to get hold of
and pull. If you're growing dicots, the true leaves generally betray the
identity of the weeds better than the cotyledons would. The only monocot
weeds likely to come up in seed pots are grasses, and they're pretty
easy to distinguish from the bulbs because they quickly develop a second
leaf; also they have a different surface texture, if you have sensitive
fingers.
It's awful how weed seeds blow around. I keep my seed pots in a
three-sided, glass-roofed shed, and still cress and Epilobium seeds blow
into them.
Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA