Gardening: Avoid being stung by summer weeds

Many people have no idea of the plant’s name, but they certainly know what it is – a common annual weed which spreads to gardens on the fur of animals and the clothing of passers-by. One day, there’s no sign of it, the next it’s there, winding its way upwards through the foliage of more-welcome plants.

Its straggling stems branch and grow along the ground and over other plants. They attach themselves to the small, hooked hairs which grow out of the stems and leaves. Those stems can reach up to three feet or more.

Although seedlings usually appear singly, rather than in great numbers (like many other common weeds), the numerous and easily distributed seeds mean the weed can soon establish itself as a constant pest, so it needs rooting out as soon as it’s sighted.

Galium aparine is its Latin name, and hand-pulling or hoeing the weed seedlings is the easiest way to control the plant, but it’s a job which may need to be done time and again.

Strangely, there are some people who quite like cleavers in their garden – the plant rarely threatens to overwhelm other plants, and it’s quite attractive to certain insects.

The same can be said of the stinging nettle or common nettle, Urtica dioica, this time an herbaceous perennial whose leaves and stems have small, fragile hairs, which are actually capsules full of several liquid chemicals, including formic acid.

So, if you touch a leaf, it’s normally a painful experience.

But nettles also have a good side. Their stems also contain a fibre, which was used for making ropes, sails and fine linen cloth, suitable even for shirts and bedding.

The leaves of the nettle may be used for producing permanent green dye for woollen stuffs and even for food, while roots boiled with alum produce a yellow colour.

Nettle acts as a hair tonic and growth stimulant; simple nettle tea can be used as a skin toner and hair rinse.

Nettles are high in iron, vitamin C, a source of calcium and magnesium. They are excellent for people who have trouble absorbing nutrition from their food properly.

Nettles are also an important habitat for tortoiseshell butterflies, so by allowing a patch of nettles to grow in the corner of your garden, you could be doing your bit for wildlife. They also make a fantastic compost activator and fertiliser.

A lidded bucketful of nettles covered in water and left to stew for a week or two produces an all-purpose liquid feed.

But if all that still doesn’t stop you hating Urtica dioica, you can still grow nettles – Lamium (dead-nettles), a genus of about 40-50 species of flowering plants.

Lamium are frost-hardy and grow well in most soils. The white-and-purple-coloured flowered species prefer full sun while the yellow-flowered ones prefer shade, so there is a dead nettle for most sites.

Uninvited guests can be the bane of a gardener’s life.

He or she spends many hours clearing the ground of every perennial weed, every piece of root, every pebble, everything, in fact, which could prove a hindrance to growing chosen plants.

And then annual weeds move in; they seem to think that bare earth is an open invitation to put down roots and that the gardener has prepared the ground solely for them.

And this year, one of the most aggressively invasive plants has been springing up in swathes.

At first, many people look upon it as a pretty little thing to be enjoyed; eventually, however, the majority see it for what it is – a weed. And a weed which can quickly clothe vast tracts of land.

It’s called Herb Robert, or Geranium robertianum, and its dark green/red leaves and pretty pink flowers have become part of the English garden – and countryside, where it’s found in the wild in hedgerows, woods, grasslands and walls, where it can take root in the tiniest crevice.

Its name comes from the Greek ‘geranu’, meaning crane, because of the crane-beak-like seedheads.

In some parts of the world, it is classified as a noxious weed, and once you let it flower and set seed, it will appear year after year.

It has the ability to colonise the smallest piece of open soil, so regular hoeing is a good way to stop it spreading.