As I was strolling along looking at landscapes, a curious thought suddenly popped into my mind… “Hey, Hey, STOP and look closely at the ground!” I stopped, squatted down and was astounded to see the incredible number of weed seedlings that had germinated and were happily harvesting sunlight! What was so stunning to me about that particular landscape, which I know was gone over 2-3 weeks ago, thanks to a fall grounds cleanup party!
Our old nemesis, that wicked weed Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) was going gangbusters and was happily joined by Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)
With these warm temperatures, if you are looking for something to offset stuffing yourself with Christmas & New Year’s festivities and goodies, right now is very efficient time to control these tiny weed seedlings.
These tiny terrors can be easily eliminated with a non-selective postemergence herbicide like glyphosate or glufosinate-ammonium(e.g. FINALE®). Also effective are non-selective postemergence herbicides that are a contact, foliar-applied, cellular membrane disruptor products like pelargonic acid (Scythe®), potassium or ammoniated soaps of fatty acids (FiNALSAN®, BioSafe Weed & Grass Killer®, etc.), citrus oil (Avenger®), vinegar ≥ 20% acetic acid (WeedPharm®) or any combination of these oils (AllDown®) are also known as “burndown” herbicides. Any of these products will easily eliminate those succulent seedlings and make the wild weed seed flinging in the Spring, almost non-existent!
You can try dragging cultivation tools (i.e. 3 or 4-tine cultivators), but it is not as effective in killing these devilish demons. That is due to these nefarious weeds being so small that cultivation merely lifts and pushes that nasty seedling off to the side; consequently, instead of severing or damaging that radicle (root) so it dies, it merely replants itself in the disturbed soil! That’s not very nice of these fiendish, because if you go to all that trouble, we want to see DEATH and DESTRUCTION of all of those abominable weeds!
If you use glyphosate or glufosinate-ammonium, remember what Thomas deHaas showed us a couple of weeks ago in “Rounding up 2021” [https://bygl.osu.edu/index.php/node/1905] what happens if you walk in what you sprayed and then walk on your lawn!!