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I have recently found ground elder growing in one of my wood edged raised beds. I do not have ground elder anywhere else in my garden so I suspect that it arrived with some imported soil/compost (purchased from an online supplier) when I made a row of three 1m x 2m beds a couple of years ago. I have also found some suspect roots in another of these beds where I have just planted out some sweetcorn – so I fear all three are probably contaminated.
In the worst affected bed I have dug out one medium and one small clump of roots.
How should I deal with this to hopefully eradicate it before it becomes more established? The worst bed was due to to have salads followed by garlic in the autumn but I can forego the salads and, if necessary, do without the garlic this year if it is best to cover the bed.
Can I control it where it is growing between the sweetcorn by removing any shots that appear?
I’d be very grateful for any advice. Thanks.V annoying, these imported weeds!
Yes keep removing all leaves you see, with as much root as a trowel can extricate, so that the parent root weakens all the time. By autumn you should be noticing less new shoots, hopefully none by next midsummer.
This is easier when you have a nice mulch of compost on top.
And keep cropping, no point in covering for such little weed growth.Seemingly, you can eat the young leaves as a salad leaf – when I was googling for my Mum on how to get rid of it, one blogger claimed that she had got rid of it by eating all the young leaves and it eventually died. My Mum wasn’t convinced.
We have ground elder in the UK thanks to Romans importing it to eat!
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