Actually it is a mint called Ground Ivy (not Germander Speedwell)

flowerbug

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wow is this one a royal pain in the butt.

by the time i noticed it becoming a problem it has spread quite a bit into the grassy area and surrounding gardens and pathways.

today i went out to see how easy it was to get out of the grass. it isn't at all. after a few moments i realised it had spread quite a bit and it's going to be a major project to remove.

luckily for the pathways and surrounding gardens it isn't quite so bad because i can stir the mulch and then be able to remove the plant and the roots.

contrasted to the grassy area getting all of the roots out is not easy at all. contemplating the amount of work to get them back under control before it gets even worse, but i don't have time for this so... will use stirrup hoe to disrupt plants and flowering as much as i can, they are starting to flower now so easy to see them as they pop up and then i look around those areas for more plants and scrape them too. at least that is my plan for the short term and this season until i can get back to it all again.

the good thing is that this speedwell does not react with my body like the other one i'm fighting off all the time which makes my nose run as soon as i start pulling it up by hand.
 

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first session of scraping with the stirrup hoe was done yesterday, i got what i could see flowering plus some other plants scraped off which removes their leaves and flowers so that should at least slow it down a bit. was hoping to get the yard mowed tomorrow but that is now likely to be done Wednesday instead. that should also remove some of the leaves.

there is still plenty that has spread around into neighboring pathways and gardens so over the next month i'll have to track as much of that down as i can and get it removed. it's not nearly as bad though as trying to get rid of it in the grass so much easier task to do. just have to be persistent and keep chipping away at it a few times a week.

letting this weed go is just not acceptable because i can see how much effort it would take to get rid of it from even more of the surrounding gardens.
 

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And it will get worse. Ask me how I know. I think that speedwell must be one of the ones that propogates via chopped bits, so my mulch mowing ways have simply spread it all over the place. Triclopyr and dicamba are supposed to stop it, but tricolopyr scares me for the trees. I have roughly 20k feet of yard out there so I am not thinking I could pull it by hand. On the upside, the rampant wild voilet spread will also be stopped by triclopyr. Its moments like these where you decide to let it go wild or do the suburban grass lawn thing.
 

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And it will get worse. Ask me how I know. I think that speedwell must be one of the ones that propogates via chopped bits, so my mulch mowing ways have simply spread it all over the place. Triclopyr and dicamba are supposed to stop it, but tricolopyr scares me for the trees. I have roughly 20k feet of yard out there so I am not thinking I could pull it by hand. On the upside, the rampant wild voilet spread will also be stopped by triclopyr. Its moments like these where you decide to let it go wild or do the suburban grass lawn thing.

i'll strip it back to dirt or smother it before i use any herbicides on there.

i just wish i'd have gotten it out of there when it first showed up but i left it alone because i liked the flowers and it didn't spread too much, at first... D'oh! won't make that mistake again...

we'll see how it goes. no plant will survive having the leaves repeatedly stripped off it so that's going to at least slow this down for now. then i can chip away at it like the rest of the weeds i'm always after.

the other versions of speedwell we have here are unlikely to ever be fully removed but if i keep after them at least it does eventually reduce how many i'll have to weed out of gardens and pathways. it's just one of those things.

i don't remove the violets from the grass. they get mowed like everything else in there. they've not spread too much to any gardens.
 
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i ignored it last week when the weather was cruddy enough that i didn't want to get outside much at all.

then we mowed.

the other day after mowing i decided to see what was flowering and how much of it i could remove and then i noticed how much it smelled of mint so that got me wondering since i didn't recall anything about the Germander Speedwell smelling like mint at all...

today i finally took a few moments to find it and see that yes, this is really the beastie i'm getting out of there.

also the other day once the lawn was mowed it was much easier to find the runners along the ground and to peel them back to remove some of them. when the grass was a few inches taller that was impossible.

it will still be a lot of work to control, but i can do this in 20-30 minute shifts every time i go out for a day's work and then do other things. this will contain it and as i keep pulling off leaves and parts of the plants eventually i'll hunt it all down. in a few years it will be gone from any spot i see it. i'm much more persistent than any plant as long as i have enough time to deal with it and seeing how bad this one can go it is definitely on the Kill On Sight list for any new infestations. so while i was more pessimistic about this before i think it will be ok now, i just have to be consistent enough to keep at it.
 

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i ignored it last week when the weather was cruddy enough that i didn't want to get outside much at all.

then we mowed.

the other day after mowing i decided to see what was flowering and how much of it i could remove and then i noticed how much it smelled of mint so that got me wondering since i didn't recall anything about the Germander Speedwell smelling like mint at all...

today i finally took a few moments to find it and see that yes, this is really the beastie i'm getting out of there.

also the other day once the lawn was mowed it was much easier to find the runners along the ground and to peel them back to remove some of them. when the grass was a few inches taller that was impossible.

it will still be a lot of work to control, but i can do this in 20-30 minute shifts every time i go out for a day's work and then do other things. this will contain it and as i keep pulling off leaves and parts of the plants eventually i'll hunt it all down. in a few years it will be gone from any spot i see it. i'm much more persistent than any plant as long as i have enough time to deal with it and seeing how bad this one can go it is definitely on the Kill On Sight list for any new infestations. so while i was more pessimistic about this before i think it will be ok now, i just have to be consistent enough to keep at it.
So my neighbors are gonna see me on my hands and knees smelling for mint. This should produce a few questions. This is no mint I am familiar with but there are soo many plants out there.
 

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So my neighbors are gonna see me on my hands and knees smelling for mint. This should produce a few questions. This is no mint I am familiar with but there are soo many plants out there.

yes, so many... :)

in reading up on controls i see that boron is toxic enough to it that it can be used but boron can also be toxic to other plants so it should only be used in just enough quantities to get the desired effect. my own philosophy is that i would much rather physically remove a plant or smother something than use a chemical control so i won't be applying any boron. if i really had the control of the space i'd like (i don't as i'm not the owner and she has her own ideas of what happens here :) ) i'd just smother the whole area as it is a constant source of grasses and weeds for the neighboring gardens anyways, but she wants that bit of grass left to mow... uhg. :)
 

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I've got this weed in my lawn, and it creeps into one of my gardens through the fence. It doesn't get out of control though; every time we have a kettle of boiling water left over from cooking veggies, I carry it outside & dump it along the fence line. Only a few runners survive, which we pull during routine weeding.

Aside from the fact that it spreads into the garden, I actually don't mind its presence in the lawn. I grew up enjoying its fragrance as I walked through it in my Grand Mother's lawn, and it brings back pleasant memories.
 

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I've got this weed in my lawn, and it creeps into one of my gardens through the fence. It doesn't get out of control though; every time we have a kettle of boiling water left over from cooking veggies, I carry it outside & dump it along the fence line. Only a few runners survive, which we pull during routine weeding.

Aside from the fact that it spreads into the garden, I actually don't mind its presence in the lawn. I grew up enjoying its fragrance as I walked through it in my Grand Mother's lawn, and it brings back pleasant memories.

consider yourself lucky to not be reactive to it. :)

i'd not mind it either if we didn't have so many gardens and pathways about and a very picky land owner that i'm trying to help out as much as possible with how she likes things to look. my own tastes are definitely a lot more relaxed than hers will ever be so it's just a matter to me of trying to get my own goals accomplished while at the same time trying to find ways of growing veggies as naturally and as cheaply as possible while at the same time encouraging other diversity. a lot of competing and conflicting things, but that's life. :) ...
 

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i get out once every few days to check for bits of this that i've missed in the grass, in about 20-30 minutes i can usually get any of it i see flowering removed plus take care of any other parts i can find in the area. so there's a good chance i can eradicate this.

the best time remains a day or two after mowing when the grass has dried out enough that i can then use my weeding knife (not a sharp blade as i don't want to cut the vines i just want to be able to use it to uproot and follow the vines along the ground as they wind through the grass) by going underneath it and then nudging it upwards and pulling the plant at the same time. sometimes i can still find runs of vine that are a foot long or so.

no illusions that this will be a one-time task, but i do know that if i keep after it eventually i'll have it all removed.
 

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