Weeds

Weeding your site, although not as important as watering, is still essential. Both street trees and greenstreets live in very small spaces that provide limited amounts of soil and nutrients. Weeds are fast growing, fast moving, and fast reproducing plants that tend to dominate space and sap resources from the plants intended for the site. If weeds are left untended, they will ultimately kill some plants and stress others. Thus weeds should be removed from greenstreets and street tree pits as frequently as possible.

• Identify the plant as a weed.
• Wearing gloves, remove weeds. When removing the weeds, take out the entire root system. Leaving behind some of the plant material will allow for the weed to grow back. Use trowels to dig out stubborn roots.
• Put the plant and its roots into a garbage bag.
• Dispose of trash properly.

Tools

• gloves
• trowels
• garbage bags

Suggestions

• When weeding, be on the lookout for poison ivy and any hazardous trash in the soil.
• Weed your site early in the fall before the plant dries out and the seeds disperse.