DON'T

B3

Don't plant  potentilla monarchs velvet in a bed with a wild strawberry problem.
Don't plant tame geum near grim urbanism ( predictive text has it right).
Impossible, for me anyway, to identify any new seedlings 😡

raisingirl

  

Topbird

Don't get me started on the number of times I've weeded round (nurtured even) a little seedling / small plant, convinced it's a welcome addition to my collection. Maybe even a beautiful 'sport' from the surrounding plants which will make me a fortune.

Only to discover months later that it's actually a nuisance weed.

As an enthusiastic grower of a wide range of hardy geraniums this can be a regular problem....

mandyroberts99

I have never had a seedling from my tame geum so think I must weed them before they look like geum? I used to remove anything I thought was a weed but now usually wait until I can be sure its a weed.......

Liriodendron

The champion "shape shifter" weed around here is willowherb.  Not the nasty perennial sorts with the invasive roots, but the annual/short-lived one which seeds all over the place, and has attractive rosettes of leaves looking exactly like phlox, veronica, leucanthemum etc etc...

I've decided to leave Lady's Smock (Cardamine pratensis) when it pops up in my damp borders.  It's pretty and takes up hardly any room - but looks distressingly like hairy bitter cress when not in flower.

Buttercupdays

Christopher Lloyd said something like "Never trust a paid gardener to remove willowherb, it looks precious"

I've weeded out lots in the last few days and I swear it alters its leaves to match the plant it's hiding in. It can't change its roots though

NormandyLiz

When we had the bog area done as part of the sewerage system last year, the landscapers had to bring in some soil from elsewhere to complete the banks. It brought with it some 'interesting' additions, including a plant that I didn't recognise. It was rather attractive, seemed to like being in the bog, so I left it for a while till it decided to go for world domination. 

At that point, I decided to pull it out - seeds pinged everywhere, but everywhere. I think it's a persicaria. But I'm sure I'll have ample opportunity to check when the seedlings start to appear this year.

The soil also brought in barnyard millet and bindweed. Not vastly impressed which a shame as otherwise they did a really good job.

But the moral of the story was 'don't just say it's pretty find out what it is'.

B3

A lesson we all learn - eventually but serendipity beats scorched earth weeding every time for me.

Obelixx

I had a friend in Belgium who was born andbrought up in Zimbabwe.  When she andher OH bough their first house together she very carefully weeded the flower beds leaving behind a wonderful collection of what she believed to be hardy geraniums.

Unfortunately every single one was a creeping buttercup.

Slow-worm

@Obelixx nooo! I'm forever pulling the damn stuff out my lawn. To be fair, it's probably because my 'lawn' is really a patch of grassy scrub land. 😁

Don't lovingly water your 2 packs worth of poppy seedlings, only to discover weeds laughing at you as they reveal their true leaves. 😫😄

Uff

Don't visit a nursery when they have pots of new to you snowdrops especially when you have a passion for them.