Weeds - Part 1: Mugwort

Some thoughts on weeds at Common Ground Community Garden, Greenwood Lake

Sona Mason July 2023

If you've ever had a vegetable garden, or any sort of garden, you likely have not used that perfect little bench under that tree much for contemplating your handiwork while sipping a hot or iced tea. Or if you have, your bottom has probably spent an entire five minutes in contact with said bench before your gaze is arrested by an imperfection. And more usually than not, that imperfection takes the shape of a Weed.

Of the many weeds we ceaselessly pull at Common Grounds Community Garden, a few are worth noting for their tenacity and power to overwhelm a space.

The first and perhaps most menacing in my opinion, is Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris), a Eurasian that colonizes spaces with both copious seed and root networks, that within a few years form thick stands of vegetation that shade out competition.

Here is what they look like as seedlings.

Notice the deeply lobed and hairy, even slightly furry leaves, which are a distinctive silver-white on the underside. Crush a leaf in your hand and you'll never forget the characteristically strong sagey smell, which leads a few misguided herbalistically-inclined folks to come to its defense, claiming medicinal value. At this point, you are free to invite them to take as many samples as they like, in fact all, provided they remove roots and everything.

But only pulling the young seedlings is efficacious, since the roots of colonial adults break off easily, leaving behind a quickly regrowing generation. Which is exactly why they are so hard to eradicate: They have evolved to become the ultimate survivors, disconnecting bits of roots in the soil when threatened, only to rise another day, leaving gardeners baffled as to why their constant efforts come to nought.

The older plants, unless herbicide is applied, will need to be continuously pulled as long as there are live weeders with energy in their bodies, strength in their wrists and flexibility in their joints, since they continually sneak under the western fence near the onions and intermingle with the precious vegetables. Left to their own devices, mugwort would bully the veges into oblivion by overshadowing and outcrowding them with dense stands six feet high. They would eventually overwhelm the entire garden as a mugwort-only "meadow", worthless to local insects and birdlife as their foreign internal chemistry ensures nothing will eat them and keep their population in check. Even deer and woodchuck, those infamous destroyers of gardens, pull a face when sampling mugwort. Only so many pungent mouthfuls a body can take.

So, if no herbicide has been decided for the garden, then one must pull, pull and pull without mercy. For leaving any individuals to their own devices, even on the pathways or outside the fence, just produces an underground railway system of nefarious roots, which pop out more leaves and stalks at intervals, at which point you might as well change your name to that Greek symbol of strenuous effort and futility, Sisyphus.