Weeds and Peas

Just a quick picture update.

I held off on eating all the peas for a week or two and managed to harvest a pile of them last week. The dwarf peas are definitely better than the Easy Peasy ones (I think they must be a snow pea variety, maybe) at this point in the season (I've found that the Easy Peasies just aren't as sweet now, even the new ones).

I did promptly eat most of them after carefully shelling them.

White Moth Vine

Aaaand the awful moth vine that was climbing over the fence from the neighbours has been removed! It's a terrible weed, and I kept chopping it back but it just regrew. It looks like the edible choko vine, but isn't anything like it.

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/threats-and-impacts/weeds/common-weeds-in-new-zealand/moth-plant/

Pictured: The vine shortly after being viciously cut back.

I pulled all the pods off a few months back, when I realised what it was. They're full of fluffy seed masses that disperse widely given the chance.

They all went into a plastic sack to rot. Once I was convinced that they were thoroughly dead, I added them to the Drowning Bin.

One reason it's nasty is that the sap drips like milk and can cause skin irritation. It's supposed to be poisonous as well and kill things that eat it (including butterflies).

Tradescantia

The other main garden weed is the Tradescantia (locally known as Wandering Jew). If there is a plant that I would love never to see again, it's this one.

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/threats-and-impacts/weeds/common-weeds-in-new-zealand/tradescantia/

It grows everywhere, sneaking through the roots and amongst the other plants, then builds up in a thick mass and smothers everything.

But you can't just get rid of it. No. It's resistant or immune to most normal herbicides, and it grows back from practically nothing. I have found random stalks with a single leaf on still growing happily a month after I dropped it on the deck. It survives being smothered and drowned, and just starts growing on top of the bits that died. I have only managed to kill it completely after four months in the drowning bin, and I had to push down the floating mass a few times, because it kept growing.

Luckily there isn't a lot of it, but it keeps sneaking in under the fences.

Onion Weed

This darned thing is taking over my lawn (especially where the ground has been disturbed). A close relative of onions, garlic and chives, it's very easy to identify by the smell. It's also edible, but as I hate the taste of the allium family, that doesn't really help.

Here you can see the onion weed after a recent lawn mower massacre. It grows back fast, and is darker and bigger than the grass. 

It's a bulb plant, and each bulb produces much smaller brown bulbs that get lost very easily in the soil when you dig them up. The only sure way to kill it is either very strong poisons (as it is resistant and keeps growing back), or to starve it. You starve it by repeatedly cutting it (while it tries to regrow and new bulbs pop up leaves all the time), or by mulching over it. I'm currently attempting the latter in the worst spot - which actually, isn't where I was digging the most. It was where the ground was completely bare in summer, so there is no competition from the grass.