Re: eradicating onion weed
- Subject: Re: eradicating onion weed
- From: &* a* M* <t*@xtra.co.nz>
- Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 16:56:06 +1200
Tony & Moira Ryan, Wainuiomata, New Zealand
Climate ( US Zone 9). Annual averages:-
Minimum -2°C; Maximum 28°C Rainfall 2000mm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Dufresne" <salvia1@earthlink.net>
To: "medit-plants plants" <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: eradicating onion weed
At 11:29 PM 8/6/2007, N Sterman wrote:
A friend sent me this question:
Do you know how to kill the insidious onion weed? I don't know the
species but the bulb has many bulblets that drop off into the soil
when you attempt to dig out the bulb. Also, the seeds are ever
present and propagate like mad. Some kind person gave me this bulb
as a gift and I have been working on its eradication ever since. One
of my areas has been weeded with soil removed down 10".
With our omnipresent wild garlic in North Carolina, I can remove
established clumps in spring if I wait to about one week prior to
blooming. At this point in their life cycle, they are spending most of
their biomass in top growth and letting go of their root systems. I can
pull out the main clump, usually 1 to 5 bigger bulbs, with up to 20
split-off smaller bulbs at the same time. Any other time in the growing
season, all I do is rip off the foliage and get one or two big bulbs.
Trial and error is the best way to time out when to pull. When they are
ready, you can feel the roots starting to give, and I crank up the tug a
notch or two higher to test the effectiveness of the extraction.
It all depends what sort of wild onion is involved. We have no native onion
weeds here, but have inherited Allium triquetrum, a Southern European
species which behaves exactly like Richard's wild garlic and can easily be
got rid of if pulled just before flowering when the current bulb has been
virtually used up making the new growth and the flower spike.. The trick is
to pulll large clumps, not individual plants and then it seems to come out
very easily. I do not have any onion weed myself, thank goodness, but once
all but cleared out a badly infested bed in one year and then finished off
the stragglers the next season.
On the other hand, the description of the growth habit with the tiny
daughter bulbs fits *Nothoscordum inodorum very well and if this is the
problem I agree with John I have never found any chemical answer. and
would endorse his method as the best way to deal with it. When digging out
the mother bulb it pays to be really generous with the block of soil removed
as this is the only way to make sure one really has got rid of all the tiny
offspring. I think it is also worth marking each excavtion and examining it
again the next season for any signs of further activity, as it is so easy to
somehow leave the odd one.
Moira
* Height given as up to 2 feet, (but often much shorter in my experience).
White or lilac flowers. Seedlist Handbook of the American Rock Garden
Society (Bernard Harkness)
