Knowledgebase

Problem with this weed don't know what kind this is #743237

Asked April 08, 2021, 11:09 AM EDT

Can you help me identify what these weeds are and how to kill them. I have us water/salt/white vinegar/ Green Palmolive Soap. Looking for home receipt.

Fairfield County Ohio

Expert Response

Hello,

Your pictures did not come through very clearly, but I believe the first two pictures are hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsute) and the last is yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris), also called bittercress and yellow rocketcress. Both of these plants are in the mustard family and are prolific seed producers that spread their seeds explosively.

Hairy bittercress is a winter annual which means the seeds germinate in the fall, which allows the plant to grow very quickly and early in the spring, producing flowers and numerous seeds before many gardeners even realize they are present. 

Yellow rocket is a biennial which can germinates in the spring or fall but grows for an entire season before producing flowers early in the spring of its second year. It occurs in disturbed or open areas in the wild and in bare places in yards and gardens.

Both of these plants are non-native, undesirable weeds with yellow rocket considered invasive in some areas.

Due to their life cycles, killing the flowering plant is ineffective because the plant will die anyway once the seeds are produced. Additionally, treating either of these plants when in flower will generally cause them to speed up their seed production before the plant dies so the seeds will be spread even though the plant might be killed. If you are diligent about removing these plants before they produce seed, you can eliminate them from your landscape within one or two years.

If you can recognize yellow rocket in its first year as a basal rosette, you can pull it before it has a chance to produce a flower stalk. It has shown resistance to glyphosate (Round-up) so homemade herbicides are unlikely to have much effect.

Another option for controlling hairy bittercress is to use a pre-emergent herbicide, but it must be applied in the fall which is not the typical time that pre-emergents are applied. A disadvantage to using pre-emergent herbicides is that they are not selective so all seeds will be suppressed, even those from desirable plants. According to the Penn State article included below, there is no pre-emergent currently (as of the publish date of 2015) available for treating yellow rocket.

The following links have more information on these two plants which should help you to confirm my identification. 
https://bygl.osu.edu/node/1005

https://extension.psu.edu/yellow-rocket

https://weedid.missouri.edu/weedinfo.cfm?weed_id=36

Thank you, Replied April 08, 2021, 1:25 PM EDT
Thank you.Very Helpful.

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 1:25 PM Ask Extension <<personal data hidden>> wrote:
The Question Asker Replied April 08, 2021, 1:33 PM EDT

Loading ...