War on Weeds At Z Building
Weekend of september 21st, 22, and 23rd
Nate McKim Bill Nichols and Doug Lawler


This weekend was the story of gardener, versus weeds, an often frustrating and seemingly never ending battle. The primary war zone was the transportation technology building (Z building) of Fanshawe Campus, where big Bill, the Douger and myself engaged in a complete landscape maintenance/ restoration project, declaring war on weeds and all things visually unappealing . Before undergoing this task however, there were other jobs to be done on main campus as well as training to ensure our success in the battle to come.

Friday was devoted to a few tasks around main campus as well as some re familiarizing with equipment and tractors that would prove to be very useful in the next two days. Doug, being new to the Horticulture technician scene, had to undergo tractor/RTV training to be allowed to operate the equipment we have available on campus while ensuring his competence and safe operation of the tractors and RTV. While this was being completed, Bill and myself (having already completed the training last year) were cleaning up some brush around campus, seeding in some grass in bare areas of turf and organizing equipment ourselves and equipment that would need to be taken down to Z building for the next two days.

Saturday morning came early with lots of preparation. After loading up the tractor and dump trailer with all necessary shovels, rakes, Dutch hoes, cultivators and other various implements of destruction, we all headed down to Z building intent on bringing about the immediate end to any weed that stood in our way. The Saturday weeding blitz had begun and with it came the aggravation of dealing with a variety of invasive perennial weeds. Such weeds included: Cyperus esculentus (Yellow Nut Sedge), Agropyron repens (Twitch Grass), Vicia cracca (Tuffed Vetch), Convolvulus arvensis (Bindweed), Equisetum arvense (Field Horsetail) and of course Cirsium arvense (Canadian Thistle).

                                                                        Horsetail

                                                                 Canadian Thistle

                                                                       Bindweed

                                                                 Yellow Nut Sed

                                                                            Tuffed Vetch


   The main concern with these weeds is how adaptable they are to the standard landscape scenario. They all prefer moist, loose, well drained soil which is exactly the type of conditions that we commonly apply to our manicured, mulched landscapes. Most of them also propagate themselves with deep underground rhizomes, that if not fully weeded will result in further division and multiplication of the weed. Control of these weeds has become even more difficult after Ontario’s new pesticide regulation. Control and eradication of these weeds is not as simple as arming yourself with a backpack sprayer full of a systemic or residual chemical. The old fashion weeding fork has come back into play and the sore back after a long day in the garden is no longer a thing of the past. So armed with our trusty weeding forks and strong backs we proceeded to weed and edge H building for approximately 10 hours straight, leaving us enough time to get back to main campus to clean up and plan things out for Sunday.
Sunday morning came even earlier than Saturday with a cold autumn wind chilling us through our safety vests and red horticulture technician sweatshirts. With the majority of the weeding taken care of, we could devote our time at Z building to other tasks at hand. Finishing touches such as edging, pruning, tree staking, edging tree wells, planter clean up, removal of tree watering bags, removal of old plastic plant labels, recording and removing dead plants and so on could be completed. We were all glad to get Z building back under some degree of control. Judging from the before pictures it’s easy enough to see why.

In the end we were all quite pleased with what we got acomplished at Z building over this weekend. We put in a 12 hour Sunday giving ourselves enough time to get back to campus for a thourough cleanup. In the ongoing war of gardener versus weeds, these three horticulture students rained a furry of weeding forks and struck terror deep into the rhizomes of the unsuspecting perinnial pests that call themselves plants at Z building.

                                                                   Nate Mckim

                                                                    Bill Nichols

Doug Lawler (In the far top right corner) despite being camera shy, Doug thoroughly proved his worth as a hard worker and an ace assassin with a backpack blower.