ground elder

[hoverfrog]

is it as much as a problem in France as over here?

It's taken me over 16 years to tame the ground elder and couch grass here, and now I have to move Now I know what Dad meant when he said it took him 20+ years to make his patch of London clay into decent loam before he retired elsewhere!

I've been stripping the root balls of all plants I'm taking just in case there are these cursed weeds lurking!

[Tresco]

Hi Hoverfrog.

I have never had a problem with couch grass, just good luck I suppose, but ground elder, yes. It was endemic in the area we moved to 4 years before we came to France.

People shook their heads and did all that huffing and puffing, but we really knocked it on the head. It  took vigilance, and a lot of hard work. We brought a lot of things with us, and I am still on the look out, but have had no sign of it yet, 18 months later

If you have been very careful  and are able to keep a look out for it, i'm sure you will be ok.

tresco

[Pucette<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Pucette<FONT><P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">"Qui ne connaît pas la campagne lhiver, ne connaît pas la campagne et ne connaît pas]

In my lush part of 24 with 1150mm rainfall perennial weeds are on the whole much more of a problem than in London but the ground elder has been less persistent than the rest; there was plenty around but I haven't got any in cultivated areas at all. I was paranoid about importing weeds, pests and diseases which was daft as they were all here already.

[passiflora]

I think you are probably most likely to bring the ground elder with you with your english plants.  It is a pesky weed and the little roots seem to hide themselves amongst the rootballs of plants.

[hoverfrog]

that's what I was afraid of - hence no potting up the undisturbed rootball for my plants!

Have just packed up the garden chemicals prior to moving - and seem to have accumulated a large collection of assorted weedkillers, and very little else! Every picture tells a story they say - and as long as I have no ground elder, convolvulous (sp?) or couch grass in France I will be happy

[Goo_Rat]

Hi HoverFrog

Good luck with the move

If you find your patch has no ground alder, couch grass or other pernicious weeds let us all know, I'm sure we would all like to move there

...and don't forget, you should have disposed of all those nasty chemicals that were banned at the start of 2004, or you could be in trouble

[Iceni]

http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/plantshop_ext.asp?plid=4598&ptid=7&_page=1&sL=

 Here is a beautiful plant - it is veriagated ground elder. I grow it in pots for effect as it grows in dark dank corners and the plant itself is so bright. I have seen it grown in beds here in France. It is invasive (hence pot grown by me) and whenever I give anyone a cutting I tell them to keep it in a pot.

GE, like Japanese Knotweed seems a good reason for moving to me. I moved to get away from JK.

 

[Jonzjob]

If you are plagued by ground elder why not eat it! Cook it like spinach or mix it in with cabbage...  Yum, yum, lovely. In the old daze it was used as a normal vegetable, but people would rather cook what the supermarkets want us to eat now?

Try it, you might just have found a new food source?

John.

[hoverfrog]

I used to pick it by the bucketload and feed it to the sheep (then eat them!) but it's something I could well do without, on or off the menu