Barefoot surprise!
As I have said before I hate wearing shoes, which means that I am conscious of what is under my feet. Over the last 2 days, I was doing some yard work. Weeding, turning compost, planted some fruit trees, planting more veggie seeds where we had harvested something…talking to the new seedlings, you know, all the usual stuff. When I headed out to the front yard I grabbed an empty pot to toss weeds into. Some weeds I walk past, like clover. Clover, if kept mowed, is actually good for the soil, because it fixes nitrogen to the soil. But some of the “clover” looked funny. On closer examination, it turned out not to be clover, but burclover. Burclover, as the name implies, looks like clover and has burs (ouch! on bare feet). It spreads out from a central root and is easily pulled IF the ground is damp. One plant can cover a considerable area, so pulling them is quite gratifying. Here is the trick, you need to make sure that you get ALL of the runners. Burclover will root itself at every node along the stems. Leave one piece behind or drop one while you working in the yard and another will grow in its place. Right now, the burs are still very green and don’t drop off or split open when you’re pulling the plant. Every bur you keep off the lawn now, will be one less you need to remove from a foot or your pets fur. If you spray them to kill them, the plant will die, but the bur will remain, drop to the ground and you will have the same problem all over again. Suck it up and just pull them, this week.
