Abandonando el hogar by gonzalo_ar Everyone knows the dandelion. And everyone knows that the common name dandelion is taken from the French word “dent de lion” meaning lion’s tooth, referring to the coarsely-toothed leaves.The Latin name is Taraxacum officinale. The flowers at this time of year are quite lovely, but everyone knows the seeds will […]

Cardamine hirsuta, Lamium purpureum, Glechoma hederacea by AnneTanne There is a cute little weed with tiny white flowers that is growing in many gardens and lawns in the United States, Europe  and Asia.  It is a winter annual that grows in spring. A winter annual is a plant that germinates in the fall and winter […]

Purslane by A. Drauglis.. TheGardenLady has not spent much time writing about weeds. But weeds are something that TheGardenLady spends a lot of time pulling as well as thinking about. (I have read Weeds of the Northeast by Richard H. Uva. ) Whenever I pull the wild purslane- Portulaca oleracea or the Lamb’s Quarters -Chenopodium […]

Colorado potato beetle larvae dining on nightshade leaves by imarsman July is the time to work in the garden –  so get up early before the sun gets brutal.  A few of the jobs to be done in July are: Water plants: If you live in an area that is having a drought, you will […]

In the last post, TheGardenLady explained the problems caused by invasive plants – that is, plants that have come into the environment and take over the native plants’ environments, eventually choking out the native plants.  In this post, TheGardenLady explains how invasive plants came to this country. Some invasive species came accidentally in ship ballast, […]

This May TheGardenLady attended a lecture called “Weeds in Nature’s Garden…the problem of invasive species” given by Bruce Barbour who is a Rutgers Cooperative Extension Environmental Agent. There are invasive plant species, invasive animal species and invasive disease species. This is a fascinating and scary topic. For example, the April 20th, 2009, New Yorker magazine […]