I am soon (after a few rains), ready to plant about half of my property with lots of delicious native plants. In this bizarre time, I have been able to keep up with the weeds. Things are pretty clean out there! Ready for my basement full of ...a lot... of seed.
But I have been interested to see a handful of sprouts like this Prickly lettuce. I have always wondered in the past, when I was hanging on for dear life to keep up with the weeds, when I would get to the end of July, more or less victorious... and then by the end of August--what's all this evil going to seed out there?!!
I think I have figured it out. I am surrounded by property owners who are... um, less diligent than I on trying to manage/get rid of noxious weeds. What I have realized is that second-year plants start producing seeds by the end of June in my neighbors' stands of noxious weeds. I can see them floating in throughout July. We had a bit of rain in early August--enough to take newly-spread seed and get it to sprout. It isn't a lot, and I had to walk through quite a bit of the property to find this little plant, but I have found a bunch of plants over the last few weeks that would have hurt me, if I hadn't caught them. I feel weirdly lucky to have had this isolated Spring and Summer to prepare the ground for a huge planting with so much cancelled. I am not sure now how I could possibly have done this otherwise...
