Usually my allergies are skin allergies. I get intense irritation from even the slightest rubbing of things like sunflower leaves. I have had extreme skin breakdown from tea tree oil. I am very careful about what I put on my skin. However, this year I discovered blooming kochia will give me a full-blown upper respiratory […]
My Backyard Weeds – Wild Buckwheat Poses as Bindweed
Fairly boring wild buckwheat When is bindweed not bindweed? When it’s wild buckwheat! When wild buckwheat is vining up through your desirable plants, it is fairly mature and can look a lot like bindweed. However, take heart, there are some crucial differences. For one thing, wild buckwheat is MUCH easier to pull up by the […]
My Backyard Weeds – Ground Cherry
There is a weed that grows seed pods that look like little Chinese lanterns. It is commonly called ground cherry, but it is also known by everything from Mexican husk tomato to gooseberry. The Golden Guide titled Weeds says there are about 80 species under it’s Latin genus of Physalis, but the Handbook of Poisonous […]
Making Notes in the Fall for Winter Garden Research
In the middle of winter, we long for our gardens. It seems like the only thing to do is either dream as we look through catalogs and books, plant things too early in the greenhouse, or break shovels in the frozen ground. Instead, we should spend some time each fall planning for what we want […]
My Backyard Weeds – Good versus Bad Grasses
Grasses can be some of the most frustrating weeds around. Even your own lawn can easily become a pernicious weed in flower or vegetable gardens because of roots spreading or not getting adequately trimmed at borders, so that it is left to seed. It helps to learn some about the different kinds of grass, which […]
