Welcome to our A-Z How to Weed Guide!
Our weeding garden guide is your quick reference list for all things weeding. In fact, you may want to bookmark this page so it’s easy to find every time a new weed pops up.
Plus, this detailed weeding list should make your garden maintenance easier. That’s because it’s a quick list of links to our articles on specific types of garden weeds.
As well, it isn’t just about how to get rid of weeds. Instead, this page offers up our insights on uses for weeds too. Moreover, it links you quickly to our articles on weeding tools. That means we help guide you through tools that work and others that really don’t.
The goal of our garden weed guide articles is to help you have easier and better success in your garden. And, we want you to have fun gardening too!
Before you get started with this weeding guide…
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How to Weed Your Garden Guide (A-F):
Archangel: (See Yellow Archangel below)
Bindweed: This garden strangler, also known as Morning Glory weed, may be one you’ll fight for a lifetime. Try our weeding garden guide tips to make it go as easy as possible.
Blackberries: Learn tips to keep these at bay by harvesting delicious berries & more. Plus, a tasty dessert recipe!
Buttercup: In sun or shade, this traveler loves soggy soil. Try our tips to beat it back.
Buttercup weed – a creeper that loves wet feet in sun or shade.
Dandelion: Is it a weed or a delicious edible? Maybe you think of it as medicinal. Before you rip & tear at it, try our tips for control.
Daphne laureola: This Daphne is not only weedy and highly toxic, but it may be designated as one your county, state or federal weed agencies require removing. Check our weeding garden guide for photos and suggestions to manage it.
Dock weed: Whether you know it as dock, Rumex or sorrel, this group of plants is tough. But, once you root it out, there are many ways we’ve shared to use it in your kitchen, garden designs, apothecary, and maybe even your livestock fresh forage.
English Ivy: If English ivy is everywhere you don’t want it. So, learn how to beat it back in our weeding garden guide.
Foxtails: We’re busy combing these out of our dog’s coats, but we’ll get to them soon.
Hiring a weeding company: Get tips for interviewing & choosing the right help.
Weeding Your Garden Guide List (I-O):
Ivy: If your garden is being devoured by Ivy, check our tips to beat it back. (see English Ivy above.)
Lamium: (see Yellow Archangel below)
Landscape Fabric: (see weed barrier below)
Morning Glory: (See Bindweed above)
Nettles: They’re edible! Try our tips to harvest them before you get stung.
Oxalis: Purple shamrock or clover-like plants spreading fast in your soil? If so, get our tips for removing it from your garden.
Weeding Your Garden Effectively (P-Z):
Poison Hemlock: This big beauty is one NOT to eat. So, learn why you want to get rid of it in our weeding guide.
Pop-in-the-Eye Weed: (see Shotweed below)
Rumex: (See Dock weed above)
Sheet Mulching: Learn a bit on how to remove & recycle lawn (and some weeds) with little effort. And, if you really want to dive deep into this technique, join our online Academy for step-by-step sheet mulching instructions.
Shotweed: This pretty little weed is easy to pull. Just get it early before it sets seed.
Sorrel: (See Dock weed above)
Spurge Daphne or Spurge Laurel: (see Daphne laureola above)
Thistle: It’s on our to-do list!
Vetch: We’re working on this one…
Weed Barrier: Sure, it sounds like a good idea…something to block weeds. But, is it really helpful or just a waste of money?
Wood Sorrel: (see Oxalis above)
Yellow Archangel: This one’s more of a devil in the dark than any kind of angel. Known also as Lamium, it’s no lamb!
ZZZZZ: If you’ve eradicated all these weeds, go take a nap!
Didn’t find what you need in our A-Z Weeding garden guide?
If you need help with a weed you don’t see in our weed garden guide, let us know in the comments below, and we’ll do our best to help.
I am new to Seattle by two years. Retired. Bought a neglected 1938 house and yard. Wonderful specimen trees but the rest was a mess. I have a super-invasive week called ARUM. It is taking over many parts of my garden/yard. No one (Master Gardners; Swansons; SKY nursery, etc) seems to know what to do with it or for it. I need help. Any information or advice will be appreciated.
Rene, Thanks for writing in. Arum reproduces underground via tubers and by seed. You can begin by digging out patches of the tubers. If you don’t get all the tubers up, it will continue to grow and spread underground, so keep an eye out for new sprouts in areas where you worked to dig it out. If more sprout, dig again. Do not let it form green top growth, which is how it will feed itself and continue its life cycle.
Do not let it produce and spread seed, which is another way it will spread. Remove any flower shoots or seed heads before they ripen. You can learn more about it on the Washington State Noxious Weed pages here: Class C Noxious weed Arum italicum
Hello! We also bought a house with an ‘organic weed’ front yard. It has a variety of weeds I am trying to deal with. My big ones are stinging nettle and VERY tall versions of rumex. Thanks to this page I also found I have poison hemlock, we thought it was liquorice, it smells just like it at the stem. Aside from digging up the whole yard, I have began to tarp it. I tarped the stinging nettle, mainly because of the pain it brings and at the rapid pace it spreads. Would you think this would help kill it?
Thanks for the help.
Anastasia,
Thanks for writing in. It’s unlikely that tarping nettle is going to stop it. Nettle spreads both by seeds and by running roots underground. In our experience nettle will simply travel outside your tarp zone and pop up there. (And, so you know, we have a lot of it on our property too!)
Rather than fight all of the nettle, we work to contain it into an area where we harvest it. Any runners we don’t want, we try to pull while the plants are dormant (aka late fall through late winter). (Why harvest it? See this: https://gardenmentors.com/garden-help/eat-drink-preserve/edible-wild-nettles-for-spring/). It does reach a point where it begins flowering. When that happens we stop harvesting it to eat, and a couple of times through the summer, we beat it back to reduce the number of seeds that form. This keeps it mostly in check, and we’ve succeeded in creating pathways through it and “break lines” in it to manage it.
Some also harvest it for edible seeds and others harvest it late in the season to use like textile hemp. We aren’t quite that ambitious (yet).
As for dock, it’s unlikely that tarping it will stop those powerful taproot weeds. Instead, you could consider harvesting it for food. Young leaves are tasty. And, some even make baking flour out of the seeds. Many use the roots medicinally too. Whatever you do, don’t break the roots and leave some in place when you pull them (if removing the plant is your goal). Breaking a root wills simply propagate more, stronger roots in the same place. If your plant forms seeds, be sure to cut off those seed heads before the wind begins to blow them, or you’ll have more dock weed all over the place.
If you’re in the PacNW, I invite you to check my speaking schedule. I often give talks and classes on putting weeds to work for you! (Sometimes I speak outside the PacNW too.) Details here: https://gardenmentors.com/garden-help/media-events-news/garden-herbalist-education-programs/
Good luck!