Backyard Reflections

In most cases, having the right landscape in your home can bring many benefits to your property. Apart from improving its overall look, it can also increase the value of your home, allowing you to earn a hefty profit if you ever intend to sell your home in the future. However, if you want your home to have proper landscaping, you need to be willing to put in the work in caring for it and when doing this, one of the things you need to do is remove the weeds.

In a nutshell, weeds are plants that do not belong where they’re growing and often, they become a nuisance for the garden that they’re located as they steal nutrients that should be going to your plants. This means that you need to get rid of them once they start growing. Unfortunately, there are also some homeowners in the Minnesota area who don’t know what the common weeds look like, making weed control a harder task that it should be.

In this article, the landscape design experts of Backyard Reflections list the seven common weeds seen in Minnesota and how you can control them.

1. Common Blue Violet – Whenever homeowners see the common blue violet, most tend to think that it’s a flower. And really, this is understandable; it does look pretty enough to pass off as one. However, surprisingly enough, the common blue violet is actually a weed and is usually characterized by its five blue or purplish unscented petals and two inch long and wide heart shaped leaves. According to experts, the common blue violet is a perennial weed that is persistent and difficult to control but thankfully, herbicides should be able to solve the issue with no problem so long as it’s applied in the early spring, late summer, or early fall when they’re still actively growing.

2. Knotweed – Compared to other weed types, outdoor living pros say that the herb-like perennial Japanese Knotweed is said to be one of the most difficult weeds to eradicate. Often seen during the mid-summer and early autumn, this weed develops large dense clumps that are three to nine inches high and have creamy-white flowers that are about 0.2 inches wide. Apart from that, they can also reproduce by seed and by rhizomes that vary from 15 to 18 inches. When trying to get the Japanese Knotweed under control, experts say that you need to target their massive underground root system and therefore, apart from mowing, you also need to apply herbicides, foliar, and stem injections to get rid of it. Once that’s done, follow-up treatments and monitoring will need to be done between four to ten years depending on the size or age of the knotweed. This makes getting rid of knotweed one of the most time consuming maintenance tasks when it comes to gardening.

3. Clover – Whenever people hear the word “clover”, most usually associate it with good luck or St. Patrick’s Day. After all, the clover became a popular flora because of those two things. But unfortunately, the clover is actually a weed that thrives in undernourished lawns and are usually characterized by delicate white or pink round flowers. Of course, you’ll also see the usual three leaflets at the end of a long stem. Once you see clovers in your lawn, it’s best that you get rid of them immediately and to do this, you need to keep your lawn properly fed with fertilizer and you should also avoid mowing your lawn too short as a thick lawn can help crowd out the clover, preventing it from growing in your garden.

4. Crabgrass – Crabgrass is the most common weed in Minnesota and it is a warm-season weed that can produce as many as 150,000 seeds per plant. Of course, if left unattended, these seeds can germinate and start the cycle all over again. Thankfully, if you look hard enough, they can be fairly easy to spot as crabgrass is broader than grass blades, grows in clumps, and has stems that grow outward instead of up, making it resemble a crab’s legs. If you want to remove crabgrass from your landscape, you need to enforce a pre-emergent treatment with the aid of a professional lawn care company. By doing so, you can prevent the already existing seeds from becoming seed-producing sprouts.

5. Dandelions – Like the common blue violet, dandelions are also usually mistaken for flowers. In reality, however, they’re actually a weed and one of the most common ones in the state of Minnesota in fact. According to experts, this is a perennial type of weed that propagates via the spreading of seeds and believe it or not, you can actually help this happen whenever you blow on the puffy, white seed heads that you often think is a flower. If you want to get rid of dandelions, you need to target them with a specialty “weed shield” herbicide to reduce the number of dandelions that emerge. If any manages to sneak through, meanwhile, a lawn care company can treat them at any time of the year with a broadleaf herbicide.

6. Creeping Charlie – According to landscape design experts, the Creeping Charlie, also known as Ground Ivy, is another type of weed that can be difficult to control or get rid of like the Japanese Knotweed. This is because it spreads via its seeds and stems thanks to the additional roots it can grow there. Like most lawn weeds, it thrives on an unhealthy lawn and if it strikes, it can be tough to conquer as most broadleaf herbicides do not work on it. If you want to prevent it from spreading, make sure your lawn is as healthy as possible but if they reproduce, you’ll need the aid of professionals to help you get rid of them as the average weed control chemicals won’t be able to do the trick.

7. Canada Thistle – Finally, you also need to worry about the Canada Thistle as not only are they painful to experience if you accidentally step on them but also because they’re incredibly tricky to control. In fact, a mature Canada thistle can have a root system that extends for 10 feet. Luckily, by applying weed control products during the spring and fall seasons, you can easily eliminate the thistle before it can flower and seed and spread further throughout your property. Other than that, applying a thick layer of mulch can also prevent new thistle from germinating in your lawn while keeping your landscaping healthy and thick at the same time.

Looking for someone who can help you maintain your garden? Look no further than Backyard Reflections. When it comes to outdoor living and maintenance projects, we are the leading experts to approach and we won’t let you down! With 20 years of experience in the landscaping industry, we are dedicated to giving homeowners nothing but the best when it comes to products and services. You can rely on us! Give us a call at (320) 274-6336 or fill out our contact form to get in touch with us and request a consultation today!