In the southern regions on melons and gardens, you can often find an unusual plant, which is considered a weed, as it is found in large numbers in open spaces. Questions about how to get rid of purslane are relevant where new areas have to be used or those that have been fertilized with droppings and contain seeds of this plant in large quantities. This plant is an annual, it is afraid of frost and propagates by seeds, the germination of which is comparable to the seeds of known weeds - wheat grass, quinoa, woodlice, amaranth (known to us under the name "shiritsa"). It has a core root and a high ability to vegetative propagation.
What is this plant growing in the garden?
Garden weed Purslane is an annual herbaceous plant with fleshy, highly branched stems, wedge-shaped leaves similar to a scapula, and bisexual sessile flowers of yellow color. The root is weakly branching. Its shape depends on the soil in which purslane has to grow. Fruit - a box with small seeds, which, after drying, cracks and scatters them up to 2 meters around the mother plant.
It is curious that purslane is in all directories of medicinal herbs. He uses both the stem and the seeds. Purslane blooms from June until frost.
The plant does not tolerate shade at all and grows well only in open sunny areas. In addition, it has highly effective C-4 photosynthesis and wax-covered leaves and stems, which allows it to grow quickly on soils with low nutrition and not suffer from excessive insolation. Blooming purslane is readily visited by bees, especially in dry summers, when other honey plants are inaccessible.
Reference plants of medicinal plants recommend Purslane as a means of accelerating heart rate, increasing pressure, dilating blood vessels. Fresh Purslane juice helps treat eye infections, heals wounds, and a salad from the leaves of this plant is an excellent vitamin remedy for scurvy. Therefore, before you destroy the purslane in your area, think about whether to dry the resulting grass or feed it to a pet?
Purslane: garden cultivation
It may be interesting for those for whom the struggle against garden purslane is relevant that there is a cultural form of this plant. Sometimes it is also called Purslane vegetable. This form is characterized by stronger, upright stems, larger fleshy leaves that can be painted in various shades of green. There is evidence that this plant was grown by the ancient Egyptians. In Europe, it was introduced into the culture in France in the 17th century. The burning, sour-tart taste of young leaves, taken before flowering, gives piquancy to green salads, which include garden purslane. How to remove it from the site, the French did not think about it, since this plant was brought here and was specially grown on the beds.
Features of weed growth in your area
There are few such unusual and useful weeds in the world as garden purslane. How to bring this plant, you can understand from the features of its cultivation. Purslane rarely grows even in partial shade. Therefore, planting trees and shrubs in an open area where the purslane is in full swing, you will quickly get rid of this plant.
So that the purslane does not breed
The seeds of this plant are surprisingly tenacious and can retain germination in the ground for up to 40 years. Large bushes of purslane per season are capable of producing up to 3 million small seeds that are effectively scattered by cracking bolls. You should not leave the collected plants on the site if they have green boxes. Seeds ripen well in them, and already this year, at a temperature of 25 to 30 degrees, seedlings reappear.
However, of the millions of seeds that have sprouted, only a few survive to bear fruit. Purslane is a fragile plant, at a young age afraid of spring frosts. However, adult specimens depart well if they are cut off at soil level. They give powerful lateral growth from sleeping buds, which are located at a depth of 2 cm from the surface of the earth. That is why it is better to pull out plants with a root.
Another reason why torn weeds should be removed from the site is the ability of the purslane to root in green cuttings and leaves. The shoots broken off in a knot in damp weather form air roots and take root well.
About the dangers of choppers
You should not try to get rid of the thickets of weed with a chopper. In fact, this tool only propagates purslane. How to derive it, we will describe below.
A similar situation is observed when trying to apply a cultivator. All the ways in which a purslane is divided into parts do not destroy this weed, but increase its amount on the site. Harvesting cut bushes with a rake reduces the number of twigs and leaves left on the site, but does not make it possible to completely get rid of them.
Use of herbicides to control the plant
The use of systemic herbicides is not the most effective method of combating such a weed as Purslane. How to remove it from the beds using garden chemistry? It is unlikely that you will be satisfied with the answer to this question. The presence of wax coating on the leaves of purslane provides it with high resistance to chemicals. It is believed that higher doses of poisons help, but they get into the soil and harm cultivated plants, as well as appear in vegetables and herbs. Therefore, herbicides are the least effective in this case.
Agrotechnical methods of dealing with purslane
Knowing the characteristics of growth allows you to deal with weeds most effectively and without harm to the environment. For example, provocative watering helps a lot. It is carried out two weeks before sowing or planting cultivated plants. The site is dug up and watered until emergence of the weed. Then they are chopped with a chopper to the maximum possible depth and removed.
Deep digging is also effective. Purslane seeds can germinate only if they are no deeper than 2 cm from the soil surface. Getting to great depths, they do not shoot.
Mulching the soil is also a good method of dealing with purslane. To do this, you can use straw, sawdust, hay. The depth of the mulching layer should be at least 4-5 cm.
Mechanical control methods
If your plot is captured by Purslane, control measures should include timely collection and destruction of plants, spring digging of the site, preferably performed before the night frost stopped, removing weeds before setting the seeds. The most effective is the manual removal of this weed on moist soil, which allows you to completely pull it out and immediately remove it, preventing it from growing or taking root again.
It is important to understand that every piece of the stem or leaf left on the ground can soon turn into a new plant. Therefore, after the large plants are harvested with a rake, all small parts of this weed should be carefully collected.
The best way to fight is prevention
It is very important to timely detect the appearance of the first seedlings of such a weed as Purslane. How to bring them out at this stage? It is enough to timely detect and carefully tear out the plant and remove all broken branches.
A universal prophylactic is agrofilm. No weeds can grow under it. Over the summer, it helps to effectively destroy seeds located in the upper layer of soil, preventing the emergence of seedlings of purslane next year.