The invaders have landed

Day Lewin

I wish I had a dollar for every invader now standing up proudly in my poor garden.
It only makes it worse that I brought them in myself, Trojan horses in my long-ago innocent days.
May I warn every young gardener against being tempted to take a wild plant into cultivation...however pretty and beguiling in the place you admire it, however empty and bleak your own domain.
say NO to
Celandines
Wild Onions
Wood Spurge
Vinca minor (not a wildling, but still a spreader) AND Vinca major
and - worst offender in my own garden - Saponaria Officinalis

This last is a monster and I can't think how to get it out. Spreading like wildfire through a rocky bank that I really want to plant nice obedient little plants on.

Added snag: I can't use chemical weedkillers because there is a little fish-pond just adjacent and my four Carp have survived four winters in it, all among the cresses, brooklime and Elodia.

Is there any weedkiller that can be used near fish?

Help, help! - (just before I vanish under an advancing tide of aggressive plant storm troopers)

looksee

Celandine is a total liability and takes over with breathtaking speed - and is pretty well impossible to get rid of. I haven't come across saponaria or wild onions as a problem, but yes, spurge could be a problem, though I have some of it and its fine where it is. Another thing I would not introduce is aquilegia - one of my favourites but it seeds itself like crazy and the garden is taken over by it.

Having sympathised though, I can't offer any suggestions!

lk67

Most glyphosate weedkillers are safe if you just spray it on the plants you want to kill. I have used it close to my pond. Just use common sense with regard to spray drift, etc.

An alternative is Neudorff Superfast and Long Lasting Weed Killer which markets itself as earth friendly or something like that.

Talk to someone in your closest good garden centre. They will be able to advise you on both, or others perhaps.

Day Lewin

@looksee, - I have completely failed to establish Aquilegia. And I love them! There's no justice, LOL

@lk67 - good ideas, thank you.

Kat1170

Saw a weedkiller ad on TV, it was a gel applied with a deodorant type applicator. Don't know how safe it is for fish but has to be better than a spray in this instance.

lk67

Kat1170 wrote: »

Saw a weedkiller ad on TV, it was a gel applied with a deodorant type applicator. Don't know how safe it is for fish but has to be better than a spray in this instance.

It's Roundup - glyphosate - in gel form.