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Annual Weeds That Just Keep on Coming

Making It Grow! Minute logo

  Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I took golf lessons when I was a teenager, and my teachers told me bending over to pick up balls was good for my waistline. Ha! I bend over about a zillion times every time I go out in the vegetable garden and still have to rely on Spanx to have a shape.

The three annual weeds I have, gripeweed, mulberry weed, and annual poinsettia, produce huge numbers of seeds with delayed germination that just keep popping up every single day throughout the whole growing season. They never stop. There is what’s called a bank of seeds in the soil and when I pull a weed, I expose more weed seeds to the environmental conditions they need to germinate. Mulch definitely helps but we have a shortage of coastal Bermuda in St. Matthews so I’m waiting for a delivery of 50 bales.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.