Weeds getting an early start this year

Q: While out in the backyard inspecting my trees and roses, I noticed, already, lots of very small weeds starting to grow. Isn’t it too early? What’s the best way to be rid of them? — H.W., Albuquerque

A: You’re right that it does seem early, but weeds are so remarkably resilient and sturdy that anything they choose to do, they will, even if it means starting to grow in January.

There are three already starting to show up in my world too. I have some grassy weeds growing amongst my rocks in the front yard that I’ll attribute to the gathered warmth the rocks have retained during our sunny days. It must make a pretty good environment for the grasses to germinate and then add the smidgen of precipitation we’ve gotten and voilà! Weedy grasses in January. In the backyard along the concrete edge of the courtyard I am finding a weedy oxalis or wild clover that I’ve fought with perennially. It looks so pretty offering its sweet wee yellow flowers and shamrock-shaped leaves but then can take off like wildfire once it gets a good foot hold. The oxalis ends up spreading by these red-tinged creeping stems so quickly that if I don’t keep up eradicating them all the time, my gardens are nearly taken over by this pest.

I feel, like you, that it’s too early in the year to be pulling weeds. But the sooner you get them removed, the better off your backyard landscaping will be. So you have two choices to be rid of them.

First is to pull them by hand, making sure that you collect and pitch them. Don’t make a collection pile of them and then forget or neglect to tidy up after the pulling. The wee buggers could blow away and have just enough strength to reroot somewhere else.

There are herbicide sprays that you can use, but you need to apply them very specifically, as most can maim or harm anything they are sprayed on. Meaning, if you spray a herbicide to hunt the weeds near your roses and the roses get inadvertently sprayed, well the roses just may suffer dreadfully. You need to be very focused when spraying a herbicide when hunting weeds.

Even though the weeds are already growing, I’m pretty sure most herbicides have temperature restrictions too. So if you’re going to choose the spraying method to hunt your baby weeds, be sure to read the label so you won’t waste your time or money if the temperatures aren’t pleasant enough. Just be sure to get this early crop of weeds tended to soon.

I’ll be out getting the weedy grasses and starting on the wild oxalis right along with you. I’m hoping that seeing them early isn’t a harbinger of a great weed year to come.

Q: I just read that epsom salts are a fertilizer. Can this possibly be true? I thought our soils were pretty salty already, so why add more salt? — W.T., Albuquerque

A: It’s true! Epsom salts are a time-honored fertilizer, although I like to think of it as more of a multivitamin as opposed to a full spectrum fertilizer.

Epsom salts contain both magnesium and sulfur. Both elements are utilized by plant life. Magnesium forms the core of every chlorophyll molecule, and sulfur acts with nitrogen in making new protoplasm for plant cells. So you can see that these two elements would be great to apply to grow healthy plant life.

My container of epsom salt lists application rates for everything from lawns, roses and shrubbery, evergreens, azaleas, trees and even houseplants. Since epsom salt aren’t salt, it is a product that won’t make the soil overly salty.

It’s a good thing to apply while you’re out there Diggin’ In!

Tracey Fitzgibbon is a certified nurseryman. Send garden-related questions to Digging In, Albuquerque Journal, 7777 Jefferson St. NE, Albuquerque, N.M. 87109, or to features@abqjournal.com.